White US ex-cop guilty of murder for shooting black neighbor

WASHINGTON - A former Texas policewoman was convicted of murder Tuesday for shooting dead a neighbor in his own home in what her lawyer said was a "tragic mistake."

The case sparked outrage as it became a flashpoint over police violence and racial bias because Amber Guyger is white, while her victim was black.

Guyger, who worked in Dallas, claimed that she believed she had returned to her own apartment on September 6, 2018 and that she thought Botham Jean, 26, was an intruder.

In fact, the 31-year-old had entered Jean's unlocked apartment, located in the same building but one floor above hers.

"We the jury unanimously find the defendant, Amber Guyger, guilty of murder as charged in the indictment," the jury foreman announced.

After the verdict was read, Jean's mother, Allison Jean, stood and looked upward as she celebrated the decision, raising her arms high and wide.

"I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, it's just been the most terrible time for me," she later told the jury that will decide on Guyger's sentence.

"I try to busy myself to try to get this out of my head. It is very difficult."

The jury, which retired on Monday, deliberated for five hours before delivering its guilty verdict. 

Guyger, who was off duty after a nearly 14-hour shift, lived in apartment 1378 on the third floor, while Jean lived in apartment 1478 directly above her. 

"She knows she's made a tragic mistake, but it's not out of evil," Guyger's lawyer, Robert Rogers, told the court when the trial opened, describing it as human error and an act of self-defense.

Guyger -- a police officer for four years until her sacking following the shooting -- sobbed when she took the stand last week.

APPEALS FOR JUSTICE 

"I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day," she said, voice trembling.

"I wish he was the one with the gun who had killed me. I never wanted to take an innocent person's life."

After hearing the verdict, Guyger stood as the jury filed out of the courtroom and then sank into her chair.

Prosecutor Jason Hermus said Jean, a native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who worked for an accounting firm, "paid the ultimate price" for Guyger's errors.

"She walks past 16 different apartments and fails to register the number four on any one of them," Hermus said during the testimony phase of the trial last week.

Prosecutors played Guyger's frantic 911 call, in which she repeatedly tells a dispatcher she is in the wrong apartment.

Bodycam footage from responding officers showed them trying to save his life as he lay bleeding, US media reported.

The shooting and its aftermath sparked demonstrations and appeals for justice in a nation where white police officers who shoot people of color often go free.

Demonstrators rallied outside the Dallas police headquarters and city hall.

Jurors were given the option of finding Guyger guilty of the lesser offense of manslaughter, but a grand jury indicted her on the more serious charge of murder following the protests.

She faces up to life in prison when she is expected to be sentenced later Tuesday. 

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source: news.abs-cbn.com

Ex-cop missed clues before shooting man eating ice cream in own home-prosecutor

DALLAS - A Dallas police officer missed clues including the smell of marijuana when she entered an apartment she believed was her own and shot dead a man eating a bowl of ice cream, a prosecutor said on Monday at the start of the former officer's murder trial.

Amber Guyger, who is white, has told investigators in Texas that she mistook 26-year-old Botham Jean, who is black, for a burglar after she mistakenly entered his central Dallas apartment one floor above hers.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus told the jury of four men and 12 women that Guyger had a 16-minute phone conversation with her former partner, with whom she had a romantic relationship, on the way home from work that night after a 13-1/2 hour shift.

"Whatever is on her mind after that conversation has consumed her attention entirely," Hermus said in his opening statement.

The shooting, one of a series of high-profile killings of unarmed black men and teens by white U.S. police, sparked street protests, particularly because prosecutors initially moved to charge Guyger, 31, with manslaughter, a charge for killing without malice that carries a lesser sentence than murder.

In contrast to cases like the killings of Michael Brown in Missouri and Philando Castile in Minnesota, Guyger shot Jean, a PwC accountant who was a native of the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia, while she was off duty, rather than while responding to a reported crime.

Hermus told the jury that when Guyger got to her apartment complex, she parked on the fourth floor instead of the third floor, where she had lived for two months.

When she arrived at what she thought was her unit, she failed to notice the bright red semi-circle welcome mat in front of Jean's apartment, he said.

Jean's apartment was also unlocked, messy and smelled of marijuana, three more signs that should have tipped Guyger off that it was not her apartment, Hermus said.

Despite the clues, she still burst through the door and opened fire, striking Jean once in the chest as he watched television and ate a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

"He was in the sanctuary of his home doing no harm to anyone," Hermus said. "There he lie on his back in his home bleeding to death alone with his killer."

Guyger then called 911.

"I shot a guy thinking it was my apartment," Hermus said, recounting what Guyger told the dispatcher, noting that she never said that Jean posed a threat to her.

Guyger's lawyers are due to make their opening statement later on Monday.

Before opening statements began, state District Judge Tammy Kemp sequestered the jurors, shielding them from possible outside influence and local news coverage of the case.

Kemp also denied a motion to exclude evidence from Guyger's texts and phone calls and a motion for a mistrial from Guyger's attorneys who claimed Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot defied a gag order by giving an interview about the case to a local television station over the weekend.

The district attorney's office reexamined the case after the public protests, and a grand jury in late November indicted Guyger on murder charges, with the maximum punishment of life in prison. 

After the incident, she was initially placed on administrative leave but was fired days later.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

NBA: Durant fined $25k for harsh words to heckler

NEW YORK - Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant was fined $25,000 by the NBA on Tuesday for an obscenity-laced response to a heckler during a loss Saturday at Dallas.

The violation, technically, for directing inappropriate language toward a fan, took place with 61 seconds remaining in the first quarter of the Mavericks' 112-109 victory over the reigning NBA champions.

A cell phone video of the confrontation obtained by TMZ Sports showed Durant walking to the spectator's courtside seat behind a basket and say: "Watch the ... game and shut the ... up."

The move came after Durant had been taunted with the word "cupcake" from the start of the contest.

The term has been thrown at Durant as an insult since he departed Oklahoma City for Golden State in 2016 and an ex-Thunder teammate posted on social media a photo of cupcakes.

Durant won his first two NBA titles with the Warriors in the past two seasons, combining with fellow stars Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson to form a powerful lineup.

But the Warriors have struggled so far this season, losing three games in a row to fall to 12-6, out of the Western Conference lead behind Memphis, Portland and the Los Angeles Clippers.

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Four police officers killed, seven wounded in Dallas shooting protest

DALLAS - Four police officers were fatally shot and seven wounded by snipers in Dallas, authorities said, during one of many demonstrations held in cities across the United States against the second fatal police shooting of a black man in two days.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in a statement two snipers in elevated positions shot 11 officers, killing three. Police said on Twitter later a fourth officer had died. At least one more was in surgery.

Brown also said later one suspect was cornered in a garage in downtown Dallas, although there was no word on the second reported sniper.

Television footage showed a heavy police presence, with officers taking cover behind vehicles on the street.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dallas law enforcement community and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit officers killed and injured this evening," Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement.

The shooting happened as largely peaceful protests unfolded around the United States after the shooting of Philando Castile, 32, by police near St. Paul, Minnesota, late on Wednesday. His girlfriend posted live video on the internet of the bloody scene minutes afterward, which was widely viewed.

Castile's death occurred within a day of the shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sterling was killed during an altercation with two white police officers. Graphic video of that incident caused an outcry on social media.

In Chicago, protesters shut down a stretch of the Dan Ryan Expressway - one of Chicago's main arteries - for about 10 minutes on Thursday.

In New York, several hundred protesters blocked traffic in Times Square in the heart of Manhattan, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot." More than a dozen arrests were made, the New York Police Department said.

In St. Paul, about a thousand people gathered outside the governor's mansion, chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, those killer cops have got to go," and other slogans.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton made a brief appearance in an attempt to quell the crowd. He said earlier a state investigation was already under way.

"Would this have happened if the driver and the passengers were white? I don't think it would have," Dayton told reporters, speaking of the Castile shooting.

"So I'm forced to confront that this kind of racism exists, and it's incumbent upon all of us to vow and ensure that it doesn't happen and doesn't continue to happen," he said.

State investigators later identified Minneapolis area police officer Jeronimo Yanez as the patrolman who fatally shot Castile during a traffic stop.

"RACIAL DISPARITIES" - OBAMA

U.S. President Barack Obama described the killings as tragedies.

"All of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They're symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system," he said after arriving in Poland for a NATO summit.

The use of force by police against African-Americans in cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore and New York has sparked periodic and sometimes violent protests in the past two years and has spawned the Black Lives Matter movement.

Anger has intensified when the officers involved in such incidents have been acquitted in trials or not charged at all.

"I was already fuming when I woke up this morning over Baton Rouge, but for it to happen here again just pushed me right over the edge," said truck driver Thomas Michaels, 42, who was among the protesters in St. Paul.

"We live in a racist society where black lives don't matter, my kids lives don't matter and I'm sick of it. I don't even know if it can be fixed," he said.

Another protester, retail worker Tanya McDonald, 28, said: "What gets me is how many people are failing to see that this is happening almost every day. We're dying, we're being killed off by people hiding behind a badge and no one's doing anything to stop it."

The Washington Post said Castile was at least the 506th person and 123rd black American shot and killed by police so far in 2016, according to a database it has set up to track such deaths.

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