Slain man’s mom airs racial concern

DALLAS — The mother of a 26-year-old black man who was gunned down at his home by a white Dallas police officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own suggested that her son might still be alive if he were white.

Allison Jean, the mother of Harding University graduate Botham Jean, wondered whether race was a factor when the officer shot and killed her son after she returned home in uniform from her shift Thursday night.

“I didn’t know she was white until now. If it was a white man would it have been different? Would she have reacted differently?” Jean said Friday in footage broadcast by Dallas’ NBC affiliate, KXAS.

Dallas police late Saturday identified the officer as Amber Guyger, a four-year veteran of the force.

Dallas’ police chief, U. Renee Hall, said Friday that her department was seeking to charge the officer with manslaughter. But she said Saturday during a criminal justice panel that the Texas Rangers, who took over the case, asked her department to hold off issuing an arrest warrant.

A lawyer for Jean’s family said Saturday after a prayer vigil at a Dallas church that an arrest warrant should be issued for the officer.

“This family is frustrated. This family is upset,” said attorney Lee Merritt. “This family is grieving that that has not happened yet,” he said of the wait for investigators to act.