Allison Jean wants to let go of her anger and focus on healing.
She has been a voice for her son, Botham Jean, since he was murdered by a Dallas police officer in September 2018. Now that the former officer is behind bars, she wants to heal from the grief that has consumed her.
“I have no hatred toward Amber Guyger,” she told The Dallas Morning News about the woman who is serving a 10-year sentence for murder. “It’s time to focus on me and heal in the best way I know how.”
Allison Jean isn’t giving up speaking out about her son and changes she believes are desperately needed in the Dallas Police Department and elsewhere. She just knows she can’t let that role be so prominent.
Guyger testified at her trial in September that she mistook Botham Jean’s apartment for hers and wrongly believed he was a burglar and a threat to her life. The officer had just finished her shift and was still in her police uniform when she fatally shot the 26-year-old accountant with her service weapon.
Since the trial, Allison Jean deleted social media contacts she deemed toxic. She meditates every morning before she gets out of bed at her home on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where she has lived her entire life and is the CEO for the country’s utilities commission. She prays a lot.
Healing isn’t easy. She feels nervous and uneasy about any acts of aggression. And word of every police shooting reopens the wound just a little.
The shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth on Oct. 12 — 10 days after Guyger was sentenced — hit her especially hard. Jefferson was up late playing video games with her nephew when a police officer shot her through a bedroom window. The officer was responding to a nonemergency call placed by a neighbor who was concerned because the front door was open and the lights were on.
Body camera video shows that Officer Aaron Dean did not announce himself as a police officer or go to the front door. Dean was in the backyard when Jefferson grabbed a gun from her purse after hearing noises, police said her nephew told them. Dean yelled for Jefferson to show her hands and then shot her in a matter of seconds. Dean was arrested on a murder charge.
There was no body camera footage of what happened when Guyger shot Botham. But Jefferson’s death, Allison Jean said, showed how Botham probably died. Both deaths, she said, demonstrate that officers everywhere need better training. The Jean family has filed a lawsuit against Guyger and the city of Dallas that, in part, demands changes in how officers are trained.
“It helped me understand even better what I believe Amber Guyger did,” said Allison Jean, wearing a red dress — Botham’s favorite color — and a small pin with a picture of his smiling face.
“No sooner than the police officer said, ‘Let me see your hands,’ the officer fired. I believe that’s what Amber Guyger did. She never gave Botham a chance.”
An attorney for Dean has said that what happened was a tragedy and his client is sorry. A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Dean on a murder charge last week.
Guyger sobbed and apologized when she took the witness stand and said she will forever regret the night she killed Jean. Guyger also told jurors that she intended to kill him because she wrongly believed her life was in danger.
Botham Jean’s 18-year-old brother, Brandt, stunned the world during a victim impact statement after the trial when he told Guyger he forgave her and asked the judge if he could hug her. Their embrace was broadcast over the internet and moved people in the courtroom to tears.
Allison Jean doesn’t want to say whether she, too, has forgiven Guyger — or whether she will. She called forgiveness “a personal thing.”
Brandt Jean’s words to Guyger, Allison Jean said, will give her son’s killer the opportunity to redeem herself. Guyger has declined interview requests since she began serving her sentence in the Texas prison system.
Even as Allison Jean moves forward, she said she still has unfinished business in Dallas.
She said she awaits word on the results of an internal investigation Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall announced after the trial. Hall, who fired Guyger 18 days after the killing, said the investigation will examine incidents made public during the trial.
Prosecutors at the trial argued that Guyger received special treatment the night of the murder, including police shutting off the camera in the squad car Guyger sat in and allowing her to talk to fellow officers outside of the car off camera. Other suspects wouldn’t have been handled that way, they said. It was also revealed during the trial that Guyger and her police partner, with whom she’d had a sexual relationship, deleted text messages they exchanged after the shooting.
Allison Jean said she had hoped she and the public would know the outcome of the internal investigation by now. She wants the department to start making changes in procedures and training methods. But police officials say that the investigation is ongoing and that there is no date set for when it will be complete.
Allison Jean says it’s lingering issues like those that keep her from moving forward.
“I hate the corruption that came out vividly from the case,” Allison Jean said. “I hate that the city has yet to take accountability for the poor training and for the actions of Amber, who was a police officer at the time of the murder. She had all the attributes, such as full uniform, she used her service weapon and issued verbal commands. Therefore she was not a civilian or simply a neighbor.
“These are the things that make me very upset.”
