Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical worker, was shot dead by police at her home in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13 2020 at midnight after officers smashed her door with a ram.
Events taken place on 13th March 2020 and shooting of Breonna Taylor
Ms. Taylor, 26, was an emergency medical technician, was killed on 13 March at her home by a police officer who knocked on the warrant and broke open her door to look for evidence of a drug investigation. At midnight on 13 March 2020, Louisville police officers executed a search warrant and used a ram to break into Ms. Taylor’s home where she lived as an emergency room technician. On the same night later Plainclothes Louisville Metro police officers arrived shortly after midnight at Taylor’s home to investigate an ex-boyfriend suspected of drug trafficking. Minutes after the warrant was executed, Taylor was shot dead by officers.
Police said they knocked on doors and announced they would be there in a minute or more before breaking into Breonna Taylor’s apartment but her boyfriend said he did not hear her or identify himself, according to a Kentucky grand jury recording released Friday. According to a media report, they learned about the incident after Jonathan, the Louisville police officer who shot and assaulted Breonna Taylor, asked the staff photographer to use one of her photos from the May 2020 protest.
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Breonna’s death and investigation
White officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankinson and Myles Cosgrove of Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) who forced entry to her home with the warrant of investigation in the drug trafficking case. Two days later, Taylor’s family filed a wrongful death suit in Jefferson County Circuit Court against officer’s present and the LMPD on behalf of the Estate of Breonna Taylor. Reports shoe that investigators from the Public Integrity Unit of Louisville Metro Police Department questioned the police of the night-time raid, saying officers used a battering gun to break the door to the apartment and said they returned fire when Walker fired shots.
There was also speculation that the officers who knocked on doors pretended to be police before entering Taylor’s apartment. Former Louisville detective Brett Hankinson, whose contract was fired in June, accused one of the officers of firing into the apartment and damaging her neighbors, but did not charge the officer who shot Taylor.
They continue to press for police to be charged after a grand jury did not indict them in Taylor’s death. In May 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had opened an investigation into Breonna Taylor but none of the officers that killed her were arrested or charged with a crime. On September 23, 2020 the Louisville grand jury announced three criminal charges of endangering Officer Brett Hankinson. After the death triggered another wave of coverage largely linked to new protests in Louisville, demanding justice for the officers who shot Taylor and charges of threatening their neighbors in a federal suit against Louisville police filed by their friend.
The Taylor family alleges that her death was not only the result of a botched search warrant by a special police task force that misled drug detectives about where Breanna’s home was located, but also part of a reckless police operation linked to a city-run gentrification campaign in Louisville. After supporters, activists and celebrities questioned why the three officers involved in her death had not been arrested, Louisville Metro Council voted to ban warrants among other changes to the police department since her death.
Settlement after the Breonna’s death
According to a family lawyer Benjamin Crump, the Louisville Metro Government (LMG) agreed to pay $12 million to Taylor’s estate, one of the largest settlement sums ever paid in America for the unlawful death of a black woman by police. Louisville Metro Police Department detective Joshua Jaynes applied for a search warrant for Breonna Taylor to investigate the activities of Jamarcus Glover, who police said was known to be a drug dealer, according to the warrant.
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