Breonna Taylor was on the front line, trying to save lives as an EMT for a hospital. One night while she and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were asleep, the Louisville Police broke into her home and shot her eight times, killing her.
The reason: they thought she and her boyfriend were drug dealers. The suspect in all of this was already in custody.
They used a law called the “no-knock” policy to justify breaking into her home. The “no-knock” policy means the police do not have to identify themselves before they came in.
Another black family grieves a senseless killing
No one would have known about it until the Ahmaud Arbery case. Like the Arbery case, this, too, had been ignored and swept under the rug. Now, people want answers as to what happened, and the Taylor family hasn’t heard a word or an apology from the Louisville mayor or the Louisville Police Department.
All have been silent on this death, and the Taylor family has filed a lawsuit against the police department. Well known civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump is representing them. The officers involved, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, weren’t fired- they are all on administrative leave.
Mattingly was shot in the leg by Walker because Walker thought the police were home invaders, and he shot at them.
Crump hopes if they continue to put the pressure on, they may be able to get a special prosecutor in this case. The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, and Senator Kamala Harris are both calling for a federal investigation into this murder case.
“The public reports concerning the death of Breonna Taylor are troubling,” Beshear said in a statement posted to Twitter. “Her family and the public at large deserve the full facts regarding her death.”
