A key witness in Amber Guyger’s murder trial was shot and killed Friday evening at an apartment complex near in Dallas’ Medical District.
According to Dallas News, Joshua Brown, 28, a neighbor of Botham Jean’s and Guyger at the South Side Flats apartments, was slain about 10:30 p.m. in the 4600 block of Cedar Springs Road.
Brown lived across the hall from Jean and testified about the night he was killed by former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger.
Dallas County prosecutor Jason Hermus, the lead prosecutor in the Guyger case, said Saturday commended Brown as a man who stood up at a time when others wouldn’t say what they know. Joshua testified about what he saw and heard that night, saying he never heard Amber shout any commands that a police officer would normally shout at a suspect.
“He bravely came forward to testify when others wouldn’t, ” Hermus said. “If we had more people like him, we would have a better world.”
Brown testified that he had met Botham Jean for the first time the very day he was killed and told the courtroom the two had just had a brief conversation in the hallway.
Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the Jean family, called Brown a “former athlete turned entrepreneur” whose slaying “underscores the reality of the black experience in America.”
“Brown lived in constant fear that he could be the next victim of gun violence,” Merritt wrote on Facebook. “Brown deserves the same justice he sought to ensure the Jean family.”
We as a people need to stop killing another. We, us and our children we have brilliant minds and a surplus of abilities. I’m 61 years old; our young people have been taught not to use your brains only for street smarts. We must teach our young people they can achieve, use their brains to be the best & the brightest. There is nothing wrong with hard work, striving to make an honest living.