Mother wonders if race factored in to son’s death in his Dallas apartment

DALLAS — The mother of a 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 26year-old 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 on 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 NBC affiliate, KXAS.

The Dallas Police Department on Saturday evening released the name of the officer, Amber Guyger, and she has been with the department for four years.

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 livestreamed on Facebook that the Texas Rangers, who took over the case, asked her department to hold off issuing an arrest warrant, because they needed more time to look into information the officer provided during an interview with investigators.

“The ball is in their court,” Hall said.

The Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Texas Rangers, didn’t immediately reply to a Saturday phone message seeking comment.

Mayor Mike Rawlings said Saturday that the shooting is a “very serious situation” for the city and described Botham Jean as a young professional and man of faith who was “exactly the sort of citizen we want to have.”

Allison Jean, who has held government posts in St. Lucia, where she lives and where her son grew up, said her son’s death “just feels like a nightmare.”

The island country’s government issued a statement Friday expressing “shock” at the killing and extending condolences to the Jean family. It said officials at its embassy in the U.S. would provide assistance to the family.