A local business owner said he’s collected signatures from residents and other business owners in the area in support of changing Botham Jean Boulevard back to Lamar Street.
One night in September 2018, Alissa Charles-Findley got the call that has upended her family s lives ever since: Her brother, Botham Jean, was dead.
Earlier that evening, off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, who is white, returned to the apartment complex where she lived, not far from the police station. The way she later told it, she walked through the front door and thought she saw a burglar watching television and eating ice cream in her home. She shot and killed him.
But Jean, a 26-year-old Black accountant, was no burglar; he was her upstairs neighbor. Nor was the apartment Guyger s: She had walked into his home by mistake.
After some back and forth and debate about the cost of the name change as well as a proposal to postpone it until the Jean family is no longer involved in litigation with the city, Mayor Eric Johnson recommended that his fellow council members approve the change, something he said he rarely does when it comes to votes.
“[This item] requires 12 votes to pass,” Johnson said. “I will be part of that 12, and I would encourage everyone on this council to give serious thought to being part of that 12.”
At the start of the public hearing for the name change, Johnson asked that Jean’s mother, Allison, be the first speaker allowed to address the council and that she be given more time.