EXCLUSIVE: Video showing how heavy metal fire doors automatically slam shut in building where white Dallas cop shot her black neighbor and apartment numbers are lit up in NEON contradict her story
September 14, 2018 in News by RBN Staff
Source: Daily Mail
- Police officer Amber Guyger, who fatally shot her black upstairs neighbor Botham Jean, claimed that his door was already ajar when she entered at 10 pm
- But video obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com shows that the doors in the Dallas apartment building automatically slam shut if let go
- A second video shows Guyger could not have used her key to force open his door
- Apartment door numbers are also clearly visible and lit up in neon
- DailyMail.com can also reveal that Guyger had made noise complaints about Jean, 26, to the building management in the days before his death.
The white Dallas police officer who fatally shot her black upstairs neighbor claimed in her affidavit that his door was already ajar when she entered and that she shot him after he ignored verbal commands.
But video obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com with the aid of a neighbor living on the same floor shows that the doors in the Dallas apartment building are uniformly heavy metal fire doors that automatically slam shut if let go.
A door could only be left ajar if it had been deliberately positioned that way with a door stopper.
Further, as a second DailyMail.com video shows, officer Amber Guyger could not have used her key to force open the door of Botham Jean, whose funeral was held today, despite claiming to have done so in her statement to Texas Rangers.
At the very least she would have been warned that she was at the wrong door because the unique electronically coded keys used in the South Side Flats building flash red if inserted in the wrong door.
Botham Jean, 26, was shot dead by Officer Guyger in his apartment in south Dallas on Thursday night. Guyger said she entered the apartment thinking it was her own
The front door of apartment 1378, directly below Botham Jean’s apartment and identified by neighbors as Amber Guyger’s front door. The panel to the left of the door has the apartment number that is lit up in neon
Botham Jean was shot and killed by Dallas police officer Amber Guyger who accidentally went into Jean’s apartment -No. 1478 – thinking it was her own, and claims she thought he was a burglar in her apartment – No. 1378. Door numbers are clearly visible and lit up in neon, placed to one side.
The neighbor, who lives two doors down from cop Amber Guyger, 30, but asked not to be named, said he did not believe the petite blonde would have been able to force her way in.
Pointing to his own heavy metal door, the same as both Jean’s and Guyger’s, he said: ‘These are fire doors. You can’t really leave it open.
‘The key situation too – you can’t get into any place, you can’t. It’s impossible. You can put it in but you can’t open it.
‘You can put it into somebody else’s key hole but you can’t open anything. This key isn’t programmed for my door – if I put it in, nothing happens apart from this red light.’
In her statement to police, a version of which is included in an arrest warrant for Guyger seen by DailyMail.com, the 30-year-old claimed she had arrived outside Jean’s fourth floor apartment by accident.
She said she had parked on the fourth floor of the parking lot instead of the third and had gone to open the door of his apartment, assuming it was hers.
Photos obtained by DailyMail.com do show that the corridors on both floors appear similar but Jean’s apartment had a red semi-circular door mat outside, while Guyger’s did not.
Apartment door numbers are also clearly visible and lit up in neon, placed in a panel to one side of the door.
The funeral for Botham Jean was held today at the Greenville Avenue Church of Christ. Officials believe Guyger was confronted by Jean, who pulled her gun on him and fired – but the explanation for her entering his apartment is fill of holes
The devastated family of Jean arrive for his funeral at the Greenville Avenue Church of Christ in Richardson, Texas
South Side Flats apartment complex where Botham Jean and Amber Guyger lived
Floral tributes outside Botham Jean’s front door at apartment 1478. The bright red door mat should have been a sign that Guyger was not at the right apartment
According to Guyger’s statement, Jean’s door had been left slightly ajar and opened when she forced her key into the lock.
Her statement is at odds with initial reports of the incident and with statements made by neighbors to the Jean family’s attorney S. Lee Merritt who said they heard her banging and shouting: ‘Let me in, let me in.’
Another neighbor, a Costa Rican woman who also asked not to be named, said: ‘People say they heard her knocking and that doesn’t make sense.
‘I guess he must have opened the door and she saw a black man inside what she thought was her apartment and so she went ahead and shot him.’
Once inside, Guyger claimed in her statement that she thought Jean was a burglar and shot at him twice – hitting him once, fatally, in the chest.
Video of the immediate aftermath shows her pacing the corridor and screaming, ‘Oh my God’ repeatedly.
Guyger turned herself in to Kaufmann County police on Sunday evening – three days after the fatal shooting – and has now been charged with manslaughter and released on a $300,000 bond.
She has so far declined to answer calls placed by DailyMail.com.
DailyMail.com can also reveal that Guyger had made noise complaints about Jean, 26, to the building management in the days before his death.
Her neighbor, a Hispanic man in his mid-20s, said she had been cross about him making noise early in the mornings.
He said: ‘She filed a noise complaint earlier on in the day which said that he had been making noise before she leaves for her shift.’
The family lawyer Merritt confirmed his account in an interview with CNN, telling the channel: ‘The only connection we have been able to make is that she was his immediate downstairs neighbor.
According to Texas Ranger David Armstrong’s affidavit, Guyger inserted ‘a unique door key, with an electronic chip, into the door key hole. The door, which was slightly ajar prior to Guyger’s arrival, fully opened under the force of the key insertion.’
‘And there were noise complaints from the immediate downstairs neighbors about whoever was upstairs, and that would have been Botham.
‘In fact, there were noise complaints that very day about upstairs activity in Botham’s apartment. Botham received a phone call about noise coming from his apartment from the downstairs neighbor.’
According to Guyger’s neighbor, the building’s walls are soundproofed while the ceilings are not – a potential cause for conflict.
‘We can hear when somebody opens the door. You can’t really hear anything through the walls but you can definitely hear when somebody knocks or opens the door.
‘Sometimes I can hear the people above me every once in a while, that’s all I ever hear. The only thing I can think of is I can just hear people running but this guy [Jean], he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be running around up there.
‘I don’t know what the noise complaint would be – I can’t hear the TV [from above], I don’t hear anything like that.’
Guyger had been living in the South Side Flats apartment complex for just over a month prior to the incident.
The block, which contains 288 units over five storys, was built in 2015 and includes a mixture of studios and one and two bedroom apartments.
Prices at the block, in Dallas’ rapidly gentrifying South Side area, start at $945 per month, rising to $2,435. The Dallas Police Headquarters on Lamar Street is directly next door.
It is unclear how long Jean, a graduate of Harding University in Arkansas, had lived in the block but both he and Guyger appeared to have good relationships with their neighbors.