According to Dallas News, NBA player Bryce Dejean-Jones was shot and killed early Saturday after he broke into a Dallas apartment he believed belonged to his girlfriend and instead startled a man he didn’t know, according to police and his agent.
The 23-year-old New Orleans Pelicans guard “kicked open the front door” to a unit in the Camden Belmont Apartments, just east of Central Expressway and Fitzhugh Avenue, about 3:20 a.m., police said.
Police said the man who lived there woke up, grabbed his handgun and “called out” to the intruder. But he got no answer.
When Dejean-Jones kicked the door to the bedroom, police said, the man fired, apparently in self-defense.
Dejean-Jones ran out of the apartment and “collapsed in the breezeway,” police said. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died.
The Dallas County medical examiner’s office confirmed his death Saturday, saying an autopsy had not yet been performed. His agent Scott Nichols told ESPN that Dejean-Jones died from a gunshot wound to his abdomen.
ESPN reported that the acquaintance was the mother of Dejean-Jones’ child.
Nichols, the agent, told CNN in a statement that the NBA player was in Dallas to visit his girlfriend for his daughter’s first birthday.
He said Dejean-Jones was visiting her new apartment for the first time and, when he came back to the apartment later that night, he went to the unit directly below hers.
It’s unclear whether the man who shot Dejean-Jones — whom police did not name — will face charges.
Under Texas law, a person is allowed to use deadly force to defend himself in his home. It also says a person using force cannot provoke the attacker or be involved in criminal activity at the time.
Police are investigating. They do not believe Dejean-Jones was armed.