Death Threats: Witness who filmed Botham Jean police shooting aftermath harassed and fired
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A vigilant neighbor who filmed the moments after Botham Jean was shot by a Dallas police officer who barged into his apartment, says she has been receiving death threats ever since she posted the video.
—Dallas cop who fatally shot Botham Jean makes a court appearance; sticks to gag order—
The woman who asked to be identified as “Bunny” spoke to Advise Media Network about the turmoil she’s endured ever since she captured the aftermath of the September 6 incident after Jean was fatally killed by 30-year-old police officer Amber Guyger.
Bunny explains that she overhead two shots and a man’s voice shouting asking why he had been shot. She then rushed outside and started filming within a minute after she heard the initial shots.
In the video, Guyger is pacing the floor of the balcony looking anxious and frantic as she made an urgent 911 call. Bunny however, said the call seemed more like a personal call than a 911 report, The Daily Mail reports.
“It was just a lot of crying, a lot of hysterics,” Bunny said. “She was just pacing back-and-forth for at least seven minutes, according to my video.”
Guyger told investigators that she had just ended a 15-hour shift when she returned in uniform to the South Side Flats apartment complex. She parked on the fourth floor, instead of the third, where she lived, according to the affidavit, possibly suggesting that she was confused or disoriented.
When she put her key in the apartment door, of Jean a Black St. Lucia native, which was unlocked and slightly ajar, it opened, the affidavit said. Inside, the lights were off, and she saw a figure in the darkness that cast a large silhouette across the room, according to the officer’s account.
Bunny cast doubt on Guyger’s account and said she doesn’t believe the cop mistook the fourth floor, where Jean lived, for the third floor.
Bunny cites the floor markers and signs and doesn’t believe Guyger could have missed them. She also said the apartment’s fire doors, which swing shut automatically, could have been propped open.
The witness said she posted the video to give credence to what she witnessed happened since she didn’t believe it matched up with Guyger’s story of events.
Her due diligence however, resulted in being harassed by investigators she said.
And backlash online was swift.
“I did get a few threats from people saying they weren’t gonna leave any witnesses behind, telling me I need to watch my back, things like that,” she said.
Then Bunny because a victim of circumstance and random people called her job, a pharmaceutical company, and falsely reported that she was a ‘radical,’ ‘anti-police’ and ‘a black extremist.’ They ultimately fired her since they didn’t want to be involved, Bunny claims.
Guyger recently made a court appearance this week.
Flanked by her attorneys, Guyger, appeared at the Dallas Criminal Courthouse but State District Judge Tammy Kemp did not conduct a hearing in the courtroom for Guyger’s ‘announcement’ setting. No word on what attorneys discussed during the appearance, The Dallas Morning News reported. Neither Guyger or her attorneys commented as they left the hearing, obeying a judge’s order not to publicly discuss the case.
