The Breonna Taylor’s case just took a turn for the worse. A grand jury failed to charge the the two officers who fatally shot Breonna Taylor but instead indicted the former Louisville police detective, Brett Hankison. He is charged with endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors by recklessly firing his gun during a raid on her apartment in March.
No officer was charged with killing Ms. Taylor but Grand jurors indicted the former detective, on three counts of “wanton endangerment,” saying he had threatened three people’s lives by firing bullets that traveled through Ms. Taylor’s apartment and into theirs. Mr. Hankison fired his weapon into the blind covered sliding glass patio door and window of Ms. Taylor’s apartment building. This is a violation of a department policy that requires officers to have a clear line of sight. He is the only one of the three officers who was dismissed from the force, with his termination letter stating that he showed “an extreme indifference to the value of human life.”
Kentucky’s attorney general, Daniel Cameron, held a press conference after the verdict and said, “The decision before my office is not to decide if the loss of Breonna Taylor’s life was a tragedy — the answer to that question is unequivocally yes,” Mr. Cameron said before he later commented: “If we simply act on outrage, there is no justice — mob justice is not justice. Justice sought by violence is not justice. It just becomes revenge.”
There has been over 100 days of protest over the killing of Breonna Taylor. Ms. Taylor was a 26-year-old who was shot at least five times in the hallway of her apartment by officers executing a search warrant. During the execution of the warrant Breonna’s boyfriend opened fire, striking one officer in the leg. After being questioned several times by police he said he mistook the police for intruders because he never heard them announce themselves as police. Three officers fired a total of 32 shots according to Mr. Cameron, the attorney general. Rounds fired by Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove struck Ms. Taylor, he said, while Detective Hankinson, the only officer who has been charged, fired 10 rounds, none of which struck Ms. Taylor.
Breonna Taylor’s mother sued the city of Louisville for wrongful death and received a $12 million settlement last week. But she and her lawyers have insisted that nothing short of murder charges for all three officers would be enough, a demand taken up by thousands of protesters in Kentucky and across the country. The city of Louisville has prepared for another night of riots after the decision and Millions of people are still demanding justice.
