While suspicion remains around the shooting death of Joshua Brown, a key witness in the Amber Guyger/Botham Jean murder trial, Dallas police are relating Brown’s murder to a drug deal gone wrong.

Dallas Assistant Police Chief Avery Moore announced at a news conference Tuesday that one suspect had been arrested and another two are being sought by police in the shooting death of Joshua Brown. Brown was a key witness in the recently concluded high profile Amber Guyger court case.

Guyger was a Dallas police officer found guilty on October 1st of murdering Botham Jean when she mistakenly entered his apartment thinking it was her own as he sat eating ice cream in his own living room. Guyger’s defense argued she mistook Jean for an intruder in her own apartment and shot Jean out of self-defense when he rushed her.

As Citizen Truth earlier reported, Brown’s testimony was crucial in undermining Guyger’s defense. Guyger claimed she said “Let me see your hands” before she shot Jean, which Brown denied, saying it sounded like “two people meeting by surprise,” before the former officer shot and killed the 26-year old man.

“Amber claimed she shouted commands to Botham before shooting him,” Merritt wrote on Facebook. “She didn’t. No one heard that. No neighbors. No passerby’s. Not Joshua as he walked down the corridor. No one.”

“She was crying,” Brown said during the trial. “Explaining what happened, what she thought happened. Saying she came into the wrong apartment.”

Just three days after Guyger was sentenced to ten years in jail for the murder of Botham Jean, Brown was found shot to death outside of a different apartment complex than where he, Guyger and Jean lived.

“The complainant was found lying on the ground in the apartment parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds.  Dallas Fire-Rescue responded and transported the complainant to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he died from his injuries,” the Dallas PD wrote in a statement to Complex. “Several witnesses heard several gunshots and observed a silver four-door sedan leaving the parking lot at a high rate of speed. There is no additional information on the suspect(s) at this time.”

Police Name Joshua Brown Murder Suspects

Dallas police announced Tuesday that they believe Brown’s murder is related to a drug deal and have apprehended one suspect, Jacquerious Mitchell, 20, while looking for two more: Michael Mitchell, 32, and Thaddeous Green, 22.

According to Dallas police, the three men traveled from Alexandria, Louisiana, to purchase drugs from Brown but at some point an argument between Green and Brown ensued that resulted in Green shooting Brown two times.

Previously, Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Botham Jean’s family told CBS News that Brown had been nervous someone was after him after witnessing a separate shooting incident in Dallas a year ago.

“He had been shot less than a year ago and someone standing near him was killed,” Merritt said. “He was reluctant to testify in this case because he had been shot at and he thought some people might want to do harm to him.”

However, Merritt also added, “To have a key witness, suddenly be killed is suspicious. Was this related to the trial? There is no clear indication.”

The timing of Brown’s murder shortly after the close of the Guyger case and the actions of the Dallas police department during the Guyger case cast suspicion over whether Brown’s murder was related to the Guyger trial.

Brown, according to Merritt, was set to testify in a civil case filed by the Jean family against the Dallas police department.

A statement posted by Lee Merritt on social media on behalf of the family of Joshua Brown called for the Dallas PD to hand over the investigation of Brown’s murder to an “alternative investigative agency”, claiming a “cloud of suspicion” would hang over the case otherwise.

“This family and their representatives have consciously avoided speculating about law enforcement involvement in this tragedy, however, due to the proximity of this murder with the trial of Amber Guyger— rumors abound. It will be nearly impossible to conduct a reliable investigation in a climate where the investigating agency has been implicated in the murder itself. That implication naturally stems from a trial where a Dallas police officer was convicted of murder and other DPD officers were shown to have participated in condemnable behavior in destroying evidence and interfering with the investigation.”