Amber Guyger Trial: ‘I Shot an Innocent Man,’ Ex-Officer Says

The trial has alternately cast Ms. Guyger as a tired but hard-working officer who mistakenly entered the wrong apartment and as a distracted, callous killer who made little effort to assist a dying young man she had just shot.

Ms. Guyger testified that she was returning home from a long day of work when she drove into the parking garage and talked on the phone with her police partner, Martin Rivera, with whom she was having a relationship. Prosecutors said she was still distracted by that conversation when she pulled into a parking spot on the wrong floor.

Mr. Jean lived in Unit 1478, and Ms. Guyger lived directly below him on the third floor in Unit 1378. As she walked down the fourth-floor hallway, she said, she did not encounter anyone or notice that anything was amiss.

Standing in front of the jury, Ms. Guyger pulled her backpack, lunchbox and heavy police vest onto her arm, just as she said she had done when carrying her gear in on the night of the shooting. She recalled how, in a matter of seconds, she put her key into the keyhole, noticed that the door was already ajar and heard someone moving around inside.

She pulled out her gun, she said, pushed the door open with her left arm and called on the person inside to show his hands. Mr. Jean started approaching her in a “fast-paced walk,” shouting “Hey, hey, hey,” according to her testimony.

She fired her weapon twice at Mr. Jean, striking him once in the torso.

“I was scared he was going to kill me,” she said.

Her account differed from the testimony of prosecution witnesses, who said that the trajectory of the bullet showed that Mr. Jean was either getting up from a seated position or was “in a cowering position” hiding behind a three-foot wall inside his apartment when he was shot.