CASTRIES, St. Lucia — Botham Jean used to live here in a two-story peach home overlooking the sea.

The house atop a hill in the capital city is where he played soccer inside and broke his mother’s knickknacks. Where he used to climb from the balcony onto the neighbor’s house. And where he once stood on a chair trying to cook eggs in the middle of the night, not yet understanding that he had to crack them, toss out the shell and turn on the heat.

He still has clothes — a yellow dress shirt, a brown suit, pants he never wore — in the closet of a room he hasn’t lived in since he moved to the U.S. to pursue an education and a career.

“I guess I’ll have to give them away now,” said his father, Bertrum Jean, as he placed some items over a chair and put others back in the closet.

As Bertrum, 54, and Allison, 51, sort through memories and their son’s belongings, they’re processing grief and seeking answers about the night Botham, 26, was killed by an off-duty Dallas police officer in his own apartment.

Allison and Bertrum Jean worried their son Botham would be killed in a car crash in the U.S. They never worried about him being shot by an officer. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

At home in St. Lucia, Botham never so much as broke a bone. Now, Allison, a former government official in St. Lucia, is questioning if the U.S. is as safe as she once thought. She makes the trip several times a year and used to feel safer in the U.S. than in St. Lucia. But since the Sept. 6 shooting, she’s worried about her three grandsons growing up in America — and whether her youngest son should scrap his plans for college there.

She thinks not just of her son, but of people like Trayvon Martin, the hoodie-wearing black Florida teen who was shot and killed in a confrontation with a neighborhood watch coordinator who mistook him for someone up to no good.

“My oldest grandson loves his hoodies,” she said as pain flashed across her face. “I’m just very concerned.”

Botham didn't talk much with his parents about what it was like to leave his home where nearly everyone has black skin. Sometimes in the U.S., Botham, an accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, was the only black man in the room.

His mother said he'd make passing references to experiences where people looked at him differently in the U.S. because of his skin color. She said he told her, "I enter an elevator and a little white lady pulls her bag closer to her because she thinks I'm going to rob her."

Because of moments like these, Botham always made sure his headlights worked and his car was in good condition so he wouldn't be pulled over, his parents said. And he always dressed nicely.

He only dressed down at home, worried that some people might think he was a vagabond if he didn't look sharp.

Bertrum Jean sorts through clothes that Botham Jean kept in the closet of his childhood bedroom in St. Lucia. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

Botham’s parents said he had a deep concern for social justice. He talked with them about Martin’s death, the shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer and the unrest that followed the black teen’s slaying in Ferguson, Mo., and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem to protest the shooting of unarmed black men by police officers. He passed out water to those in Dallas protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“Why are you in another man’s country and you’re the one protesting,” Allison said she asked her son.

It was an injustice, he told her.

Allison and Bertrum Jean have displayed photos of Botham Jean and cards in their home in the capital city of Castries, St. Lucia. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

Despite those conversations, the Jeans never worried about their son getting shot in the U.S. They were more worried about receiving a phone call that he had been killed in a car crash.

They say their son wasn’t a bad driver. They feared when he drove on St. Lucia's sharp and winding roads with hairpin turns. But they also just dreaded Dallas’ highways and the drives he took to Houston and San Antonio.

Last year, in Dallas, a driver whose brakes failed hit Botham’s car, they said. He wasn’t hurt. Only rattled.

“He told me that when he walked out of the car, he had to touch himself to see whether he was really alive,” Allison said as she rubbed her own arms. “I was always very, very concerned he would have been in a fatal accident.”

Allison (hidden) and Bertrum Jean are surrounded by family and friends as their son Botham Shem Jean is buried at Choc Cemetery in Castries, St. Lucia. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

Amber Guyger’s account of the shooting at the Cedars apartment was that it was a fatal accident of sorts. She told authorities she believed that she was entering her own apartment and that Botham was an intruder. Guyger lived one floor below Botham.

Her attorney, Robert Rogers, said Guyger is “completely devastated by what happened” and described the shooting as “a tragic mistake.”

This week, the Jeans' attorney signaled the family's intention to sue the city of Dallas and Guyger in federal court, alleging excessive use of force.

Amber Guyger. (Kaufman County Sheriff's Office) (Kaufman County Sheriff's Office / TNS)

The night Guyger killed Botham, Allison watched a St. Lucian television show called Can I Help You? on her iPad. The show, on which a former government official criticizes those now in power, is appointment television for her on Thursday nights.

At 9 p.m. Dallas time, she thought about calling her son from New York, where she was visiting her daughter, Alissa Findley. She’d spoken to him the night before and thought he might be out with friends.

Before going to bed, she saw the news about a teenage boy who was stabbed to death.

“I thought, ‘How can a mother go through the loss of her 17-year-old’,” Allison said. “I fell asleep with that on my mind.”

Then, at 12:40 a.m., her daughter and son-in-law woke her.

“Mommy, I got a call from Dallas,” Findley said at her mother’s bedside. “They said Botham was shot and he died.”

After she cried and cried, Allison asked question after question.

“Shot how?”

“I don’t know Botham to be involved in bad company. Could he have been in the company of friends and got shot?”

“Was he robbed?”

“Was it a stray bullet?”

She jumped on Facebook to search for people who knew Botham, thinking the social worker who called had the wrong person. She eventually got a message from someone in the apartment building, who was able to tell her what happened.

But Allison still feels like she doesn’t know what really happened that night.

Three weeks after Botham Shem Jean was slain by Dallas Officer Amber Guyger in his Dallas apartment, he was buried in Castries, St. Lucia on Monday. A tent and flowers still covered his grave on Tuesday. (Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)

Nearly three weeks later, Allison and Bertrum, a water and sewer department manager, talk of their son in a mix of past and present tenses.

“I didn’t realize God used me to produce an angel,” Allison said. “God lent him to me for 26 years. I didn’t realize that it was a gift for just a short period of time.”

It hasn’t really sunk in that he won’t one day return to this Caribbean island to fulfill his dream of becoming its prime minister. But his parents are determined that their son’s name will stay alive — “until we get justice,” Allison said.

“We want to see that there is a different reaction by the police departments in the United States toward black men,” she said.

The day after they buried their son in a service focused on justice, the Jeans wore flip-flops and dressed in black. Allison wore a T-shirt with her son’s smiling face on the front. Bertrum’s shirt said “BOTHAM’S ARMY.”

“I’m really grateful for the life that he lived,” Allison said. “I feel it’s unfair in the way that he died at such a young age. But, on the other hand, I’m thankful for the impact he made on people’s lives.”