Kudos to all 15 members of the Dallas City Council for ultimately agreeing to honor murdered PwC accountant Botham Jean in this way.
The Dallas Morning News reported on Jan. 13:
The Dallas City Council on Wednesday unanimously approved renaming about four miles of South Lamar Street in memory of Botham Jean. He was shot to death in his apartment on that street when a former Dallas police officer mistook it for her own.
The vote came after more than an hour-and-a-half of public testimony and council discussion, mostly in favor of the proposed Botham Jean Boulevard. Several members, including Mayor Eric Johnson, urged colleagues to agree to the street name change after several council members had wanted to delay the vote. …
Botham Jean Boulevard will run between Interstate 30 to South Central Expressway. The road includes South Side Flats, the apartment complex where Jean and his killer, Amber Guyger, lived. The Dallas Police Department headquarters is less than a block away. Another roughly mile-long stretch of the street north of I-30 through downtown Dallas to Interstate 35E, would not be renamed.
One council member wanted to delay the vote until the Jean family’s wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Dallas and former Dallas Police officer Amber Guyger, who shot and killed Jean, is resolved in federal court, according to the Dallas Morning News. Another council member raised concerns about costs associated with changing the street name.
The city estimates it will cost around $20,000 to change the street signs, according to the Dallas Morning News. It’ll take about 60 days to change the stretch of South Lamar Street to Botham Jean Boulevard.
Just before 10 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2018, Jean, who worked at PwC in Dallas, was in his apartment on the fourth floor of the South Side Flats apartment complex eating ice cream on his couch and watching TV when Guyger, who had just completed a 13 1/2-hour shift and was in uniform, opened the front door, which was slightly ajar, thinking it was her apartment on the third floor. She had mistakenly parked on the fourth floor of the apartment complex’s garage instead of the third floor.
When Guyger opened the door to Jean’s apartment and saw him, she thought he was an intruder. Guyger eventually fired two shots at Jean, one fatally hitting him in the chest.
In the 911 call she made after shooting Jean, Guyger repeatedly told the dispatcher that she thought she had entered her apartment, not Jean’s, and that she was going to lose her job.
Guyger did get fired from her job on Sept. 24, about two weeks after she was arrested and charged with manslaughter in Jean’s death. Guyger had worked for the Dallas Police Department for nearly five years.
After two days of hearing evidence in late November, a Dallas County grand jury on Nov. 30 upgraded Guyger’s charge from manslaughter to murder. She turned herself in to authorities that afternoon and was released on $200,000 bond.
A jury of eight women and four men sentenced Guyger to 10 years in prison on Oct. 2, 2019, a day after the jurors convicted her of murdering Jean.
Photo courtesy of The Botham Jean Foundation.
Dallas City Council approves renaming street in memory of Botham Jean [Dallas Morning News]
