The police officer in the Dallas apartment shooting previously shot a suspect

South Side Flats is shown in this Friday, Sept. 7, 2018 photo. A Dallas police officer returning home from work shot and killed a neighbor after she said she mistook his apartment for her own
(Image credit: Ryan Tarinelli/The Associated Press)

The Dallas police officer who fatally shot a man Thursday after she mistakenly entered his apartment, thinking it her own, has been identified as Amber Guyger.

She has worked with the Dallas Police Department for four years and was involved in another shooting in May 2017. In that incident, Guyger shot a suspect she said was reaching for another officer's Taser during a struggle. He survived, and she wasn't charged.

Guyger hasn't been charged for this shooting either, and the family of her victim, Botham Jean, has argued she is receiving special treatment as a cop. Guyger is white, and Jean — like a disproportionate number of people killed by police in America — was black.

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"This family is frustrated," said their attorney, Lee Merritt. "This family is grieving that [an arrest] has not happened yet. We believe the fact that that has not happened yet is a reflection on deferential treatment for law enforcement officers."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.