DALLAS — The mother of a black man who was gunned down at his home by a white Dallas police officer who said she mistook his apartment for her own suggested that her son might still be alive if he were white.

Botham Jean

Allison Jean, the mother of 26-year-old Botham Jean, wondered whether race was a factor when the officer shot her son after she returned home in uniform from her Thursday night shift.

“I didn’t know she was white until now. If it was a white man would it have been different? Would she have reacted differently?” Jean said Friday in footage broadcast by Dallas’ NBC affiliate, KXAS .

Authorities haven’t released the officer’s name.

Dallas police Chief U. Renee Hall said Friday that her department was seeking to charge the officer with manslaughter. But she said Saturday during a criminal justice panel livestreamed on Facebook that the Texas Rangers, who took over the case, asked her department to hold off issuing an arrest warrant because they needed more time to look into information the officer provided during an interview with investigators.


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