A Jefferson County grand jury has indicted one of three Louisville officers who fatally shot 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor, but the charges are not related to her death.
Former Louisville Metro Police Department Officer Brett Hankison was charged Wednesday afternoon with three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree for shooting into a neighboring apartment. The other two officers involved in the March 13 shooting — Sergeant John Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove — were not charged.
That means that none of the officers were found to be criminally responsible for either killing Taylor or for wantonly shooting in her own apartment, even though they fired more than two dozen rounds into her residence. Taylor’s death certificate said she was hit five times, and she died in the hallway.
A wanton endangerment charge is a class D felony and carries a penalty of one to five years in prison, the Louisville Courier Journal notes. A $15,000 cash bond for Hankson was set and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer representing Taylor’s family, said the decision was “outrageous and offensive.”
“If Brett Hankison’s behavior was wanton endangerment to people in neighboring apartments, then it should have been wanton endangerment in Breonna Taylor’s apartment too,” he wrote in a tweet. “In fact, it should have been ruled wanton murder!”
Attorney General Daniel Cameron explained the charges, following months of protests across the country demanding justice for Taylor’s death. He said the investigation showed that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in returning deadly fire after they were fired upon by Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, who has said he didn’t know police were at the door, according to the Courier Journal.
“Justice is not often easy and does not fit the mold of public opinion. And it does not conform to shifting standards,” Cameron said. “I know that not everyone will be satisfied with the charges we’ve reported today.”
Taylor was fatally shot in the early hours of March 13 during a drug raid on her apartment as part of a larger investigation in connection with her former boyfriend. The plainclothes officers — Hankison, Mattingly, and Cosgrove — used a no-knock warrant and said they announced themselves before they entered her residence with a battering ram.
Walker said that they didn’t hear the officers announce themselves and didn’t receive a response when he asked who was pounding at the door. When police burst through the entryway, he fired a single shot from his Glock handgun. The officers then opened fire in response, spraying the apartment and neighboring residences.
