Former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger’s trial, the object of local and national media’s fixation for the better part of a week and a half, has moved in fits and starts. Before the trial proper even started, it took attorneys on both sides more than a week to cull…
Friends and family, politicians both foreign and domestic, as well as supporters of every stripe, all donned the color red and converged on the Renaissance Dallas Hotel on what would have been Botham Jean’s 28th birthday. Red was his favorite color. “He lived his life in such a way that…
For months, Dallas has debated the fate of former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger. On Sept. 6, 2018, she shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean, believing, she said, that Jean was an intruder in her apartment. Instead, Guyger had entered Jean’s apartment, which sat directly above hers. As of…
Protesters gathered outside the Dallas Police Association building near sunset Friday, holding signs reading “Mata Gotta Go” and “Resign Mata,” calling for the firing of the DPA president. The activists say Mike Mata broke police protocol after one of the department’s former officers, Amber Guyger, shot and killed Botham Jean,…
Saturday at Frank Crowley Courthouse had a vibe easily recognizable to anyone who’s ever worked the weekend shift in an office building. Head to any floor in the building except the seventh, and Dallas’ hub of criminal courts activity was bereft of action. Get off the elevator on the seventh…
The story on Tuesday, the second day of former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial, was one of the mundane and the visceral. Cops and apartment managers talked for hours about procedures, floor plans and door locks, drawing the outline of a picture that’s yet to come fully…
The second day of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial focused on the 911 call Guyger placed after shooting Botham Jean and body camera footage from the Dallas Police Department officers who responded to the scene. First on the stand was the 911 dispatcher who answered the call…
The story of Day 1 of former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial was one of flash and substance. Those tuning in to the trial hoping they’d get something different, or maybe a little salacious, were treated by the prosecution. Those looking for answers to some of the…
A single phone call made all the difference the night former Dallas Police Department officer Amber Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean, Assistant Dallas County District Attorney Jason Hermus said Monday during opening statements in Guyger’s murder trial. Before it, Hermus said, Guyger was having a normal commute home from…
For decades, Dallas cops didn’t go on trial. From 1973, when a Travis County jury convicted Dallas Police Department Officer Darrell Cain of murder after Cain shot 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez in the head in the back of a patrol car during an interrogation, to April 2014, when a Dallas County…
So far The Dallas Morning News podcast on the Botham Jean/Amber Guyger murder trial has all the stylish podcast elements — spooky theme music, random sound bites, breathy voice-overs — with the exception of one big one. Suspense. In the best podcasts I have listened to (“Buried,” the disappearance of Carey Mae Parker), you…
Federal officials announced Wednesday that they’ve arrested a Dallas-based man on sex trafficking charges. Tremont Blakemore may have trafficked hundreds of victims, according to the feds, keeping them under his control through violence, intimidation and frequent threats. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s investigations arm began looking into Blakemore in…
The case of Austin Shuffield, the bartender accused of a brutal, caught-on-video assault in Deep Ellum this spring, will move forward without the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. “Due to the bias the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has shown in the prosecution of this case, the defense filed a…
At least Rafael Rubi is a bad shot. That’s the best that can be said after Rubi, a 24-year-old Dallas resident, pleaded guilty last week to participating in four separate drive-by shootings over a two-month span in Dallas during the spring of 2018. Tuesday, federal officials announced that they’d tied…
A Dallas County Grand Jury has indicted a 22-year-old man for the murder of a woman pulled out of White Rock Lake on June 1, according to court documents. Ruben Alvarado is set to stand trial for killing Chynal Lindsey, 26. At the time of her death, Lindsey was the…
While the state has made improvements in the area of school safety, Texas could still do more to head off campus threats before they arise, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in a report released Tuesday. In the report, Abbott pointed to new school safety legislation, teacher training and campus security upgrades…
Cue the weird science fiction music for “THE RETURN OF RENEE.” You want to see something really scary? Go to the Dallas Police Department Twitter page, Dallas Police Dept @DallasPD, scroll down a day or two and look at the item, “Today, Chief Hall returns to duty.” It’s a cellphone…
Proving the axiom that even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut this week is Texas Attorney General and friend of the Observer Ken Paxton. Thursday afternoon, Paxton — who’s still under felony indictment and still trying to get Texans with pre-existing conditions kicked off their health insurance — found his…
Dallas’ six weeks-running municipal mystery is over. Police Chief U. Renee Hall will be back on the job Monday, Dallas City Manager TC Broadnax announced Wednesday night. Hall’s been on medical leave since July. According to the department, Hall’s personal doctor suggested she undergo major surgery after Hall’s mother died…
Attorney General William Barr appeared with Senator John Cornyn to promote safe neighborhood program while side-stepping the issue of wide-spread gun control.
Taking a page from former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings’ preferred form of leadership, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson took his first swing at addressing the spate of high-profile murders that have shaken his city in 2019, announcing Monday that he’s created a civilian task force to look into violent crime in…
On one level, the whole thing’s absurd, that there are so many legal questions to argue about as we approach former Dallas Police Department Officer Amber Guyger’s murder trial. The facts are not in dispute. Guyger shot and killed Botham Jean almost a year ago, as Jean hung out alone…
