Breonna Taylor

Breonna Taylor (1993-2020), a medical tech at a university hospital in the middle of a pandemic, was killed by police officers in her home in Louisville, Kentucky on March 13th 2020. She was Black American, they were White American.

At about a quarter to one in the morning on Friday March 13th, men used a battering ram to burst into her home. Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend, was there and called the police. In the US, if someone breaks into your home, you are allowed to shoot first and ask questions later (castle doctrine). Walker had a gun and, fearing for himself and his girlfriend, he shot at the intruders.

A shoot-out followed. As Walker’s lawyer tells it, bullets hit the kitchen, the living room ceiling, the living room window, a wall across from the window, the clock on the wall, a blue cooking pot, a wooden chair, a full-length mirror. Some bullets went into the upstairs apartment and some into the apartment next door – where there was a five-year-old child and his pregnant mother. Someone was even firing bullets from outside through the closed window curtains.

At least eight bullets hit Breonna Taylor, killing her in the hallway.

The intruders turned out to be plainclothes policemen. They arrested Walker for attempted murder: one of the bullets went into an officer’s leg (possibly friendly fire).

Robert Eggert, Walker’s lawyer:

“Had Breonna Taylor been killed by anyone except police, the person or persons responsible for her death would have been charged with a homicide.”

The police say it was a drug raid gone bad. They said they knocked and announced themselves several times, but that seems unlikely since they had a battering ram and a no-knock search warrant. Neither Walker nor any of the neighbours heard the police announce themselves. At the time of the raid, the man they were looking for had already been arrested in another part of town!

Video: None, at least so far. Louisville police do in fact wear body cameras, but not, for some strange reason, the Criminal Interdiction division to which the officers belonged.

Audio: There is a sound recording of the shoot-out and presumably of Walker’s call to the police.

It is fair to assume that Taylor and Walker had no criminal record, that no drugs were found, and that Walker’s gun was registered – because otherwise the White press would be shouting it from the roof tops.

The three officers:

• Jonathan Mattingly – the one shot in the leg.
• Brett Hankison – accused in a 2019 lawsuit of being a vindictive dirty cop who plants drugs. There is video to back up that claim.
• Myles Cosgrove

All three have been taken off the streets pending the outcome of the police cover-up by the Louisville Police Department’s Public Integrity Unit. Its findings have just been turned over to the FBI and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Cameron will determine whether to charge the officers with a crime (most killer cops never are). He is a Black Republican.

– Abagond, 2020.

Update (September 23rd): Attorney General Cameron will not be charging any of the three officers with a crime for killing Breonna Taylor. Officer Hankison, however, will be charged for “wanton endangement” – not of Breonna Taylor or even her Black neighbours, but just for endangering her White neighbours. Cameron is on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court (Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just died). Louisville braces for riots.

See also:

• The extremely incomplete list of unarmed Blacks killed by police
• killer cops
• also killed at home by the police (off the top of my head):
  • Botham Jean
  • Aiyana Jones
  • Ramarley Graham
  • Kenneth Chamberlain
  • Charleena Lyles
  • Korryn Gaines
• no-knock warrants

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