Former Dallas officer who shot St Lucian Botham Jean in apartment that she mistook for hers gets parole

A white Dallas police officer convicted of killing a black man in his apartment that she mistook for her own was granted parole Thursday after serving seven years of her 10-year sentence.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, which is appointed by Governor Greg Abbott, rejected Amber Guyger’s initial parole request in 2024, but approved her case over the objections of victim Botham Jean’s family the first time she was eligible to ask again.

Guyger, 38, was convicted of murder in the 2018 killing of 26-year-old Jean, an accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St Lucia, who had been eating a bowl of ice cream when Guyger entered his home and shot him. Guyger was arrested three days after the shooting and was fired before her murder trial.