Former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger repeated insistently and desperately, “I thought I was in my apartment,” to the 911 dispatcher that took her call moments after she shot, and ultimately killed, 26-year-old Botham Jean in his own apartment.
As local station WFAA, who first released the recording that is just shy of 6 minutes, notes: Guyer repeated her claim 19 times.
Guyger alternates between talking to the dispatcher, trying to get Jean to respond to her, and talking to herself.
In audio provided by the station, Guyger requests police and paramedics, claiming that she entered the apartment thinking it was hers and “shot a guy.”
“You shot someone?” the dispatcher asks.
“Yes I thought it was my apartment. I’m f–ked. Oh my God. I’m sorry,” an increasingly panicked Guyger responds.
Despite the fact that she was not in her apartment—and had just shot an innocent man in the comfort of his own home—Guyger could be heard saying, “I’m going to lose my job. I thought it was my apartment.”
“Hey man,” she said, apparently turning to Jean, before adding “F–k.”
She continues to try to get Jean to respond to her and, it seems, to remain conscious.
“Hey, bud. Hey, bud. Hey, bud. Come on. Oh, f–k,” she says before repeating again, “I thought it was my apartment.”
The dispatcher asks Guyger for the gate code to her complex, which Guyger was unable to provide. In between talking to herself and the dispatcher she continues to try to talk to Jean.
“Hey, bud. Hey, bud. They’re coming. They’re coming. I’m sorry, man,” she said. “”Oh my God. I’m done. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry.”
As the call nears its end, Guyger can be heard being a bit disoriented, apparently confused as to how she ended up in the apartment on the floor above her own.
“I… I … How the f–k did I put the… How did I… How did I… I’m so tired. Hurry,” she said.
As WFAA notes, on the night Guyger killed Jean, she had just finished an almost 14-hour shift, however police have refused to release records of how many hours she worked that week.
Guyger was indeed fired from her job as a police officer more than two weeks after Jean’s death.
Initially, she faced charges of manslaughter, but those charges were ultimately upgraded to murder charges. She is set to go to trial in September.
One thing that was notably absent from Guyger’s tearful 911 call was any indication that she felt any threat or fear when she shot Jean, something Lee Merritt, an attorney representing Jean’s family, noted on Instagram with a short clip of the recording.
“There is nothing new that can be gleaned from this recording that helps justify Guyger’s actions. Completely absent from the 911 recording is any actual justification for the use of deadly force,” Merritt wrote in the Instagram caption. “Guyger will almost certainly argue at trial that she ‘feared for her life’. She failed to make any such claim moments after shooting Botham in the chest. If he presented a threat to her at all— this would be the first thing she said as she explained away her actions on the call. Conversely, in the absence of any indication that Botham Jean represented a threat to Guyger, the claim that she entered his apartment believing it to be her own falls desperately short of justifying her decision to shoot him.”
