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Former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger To 911: 'I Thought It Was My Apartment'

File photo provided by the Mesquite Police Department of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, taken Friday, Nov. 30, 2018.
Associated Press
File photo provided by the Mesquite Police Department of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, taken Friday, Nov. 30, 2018.

The former Dallas police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in his own home told a 911 dispatcher "I thought it was my apartment" nearly 20 times as she waited for emergency responders to arrive, according to a 911 recording obtained by TV station WFAA.

"I'm an off-duty officer. I thought I was in my apartment and I shot a guy thinking he was, thinking it was my apartment," Amber Guyger said in the recording:

Guyger, who is white, is chargedin the September 2018 killing of Botham Jean and is set to go to trial later this year. She has said she entered Jean's apartment, thinking it was her own, and fatally shot him.

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On the call, Guyger can be heard apologizing to Jean, who was a 26-year-old native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who worked in Dallas for an accounting and consulting firm.

WFAA hasn't said how it obtained the recording.

The Dallas Police Department says it doesn’t know how WFAA got the recording and that it’s launched an internal investigation into the recording's release. The department says it’s not releasing the recording due to an exception granted by the Texas attorney general’s office.

Attorney Daryl Washington, who is representing Jean's family, noted that Guyger did not tell the operator she was afraid of Jean or that she thought he was an intruder.

"There was nothing in that video or the recording where she ever indicated she thought Botham was trying to harm her," Washington told WFAA. "She was very fast to shoot without asking very many questions."

Guyger sounded frantic during the nearly six-minute call and says both "I'm gonna lose my job" and "I am going to need a supervisor." At one point, she seems to question how she ended up in Jean's apartment and says, "I'm so tired."

The call ends as police officers arrive and Guyger tells them, "No, it's me. I'm off duty, I'm off duty."

KERA's Christy Robinson and Eric Aasen contributed to this report.