Three men were indicted in the death of key witness Joshua Brown, who testified he heard the gunshots ex-Dallas cop Amber Guyger fired, killing Botham Jean, a black associate at a top accounting and consulting firm. A Dallas County grand jury indicted 22-year-old Thaddeous Charles Green, 20-year-old Jacquerious Mitchell, and 32-year-old Michael Diaz Mitchell Thursday on murder charges in the death of Brown, according to the Dallas County District Attorney’s office.
Both Mitchells were captured in October, but although an arrest warrant was issued Monday for Green on the charge of capital murder by terror threat, Green has not been arrested, a spokesman with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department said in an email Tuesday to Daily Kos.
Green is accused of orchestrating a drug deal that led to Brown’s death Oct. 4, less than two weeks after he testified in Guyger’s trial. Assistant Chief Avery Moore said at a news conference Oct. 8 Green and Jacquerious Mitchell shared a vehicle Michael Mitchell drove from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Brown’s Texas apartment. When they arrived, Green got out and what started as a conversation between Green and Brown, escalated to “physical altercations,” Moore said.
That’s when Jacquerious Mitchell allegedly got out of the vehicle, according to police. Brown ordered him to get back inside and fired at him for an unknown reason, Moore said. Jacquerious Mitchell was hit in the chest, he told police. “As he’s laying in the vehicle he hears two more gunshots,” Moore said. “He says that Thaddeous Green shot Joshua Brown two times.” In a search of Brown’s apartment, police confiscated 12 pounds of marijuana, 143 grams of THC, cartridges, and $4,000, Moore said.
Brown, who lived across the hall from Jean at South Side Flats apartments but later moved to the complex he was killed near, testified that he met the 26-year-old Jean earlier the same day of his death Sept. 6, 2018. He said police knocked on both their doors responding to an alleged noise complaint. “Kind of odd ’cause it wasn’t no noise,” Brown said.
After talking to Jean, the witness said both men assumed police were really there because they had both been smoking weed separately and the smell lingered. Brown said after the encounter with police, he left his apartment to watch a football game and returned to hear the gunshots that ultimately killed Jean. Brown said he saw Guyger in the hallway through his peephole and heard her talking on the phone.
RELATED: Joshua Brown, key witness in Amber Guyger murder trial, shot and killed at Dallas apartment complex
It wasn’t that conversation, however, that caused the 28-year-old to break down on the stand. That happened when he was asked about Jean’s singing. As Brown mentioned hearing his neighbor singing gospel songs and Drake music in the mornings, he struggled to stop his voice from cracking. He folded his head downward, wiped his eyes with his shirt, and plucked a tissue from a box a prosecutor handed him.
He paused until a prosecutor suggested they take a break. By the time he left the courtroom for a recess, the presiding Judge Tammy Kemp seemed to be choking back tears as well.