1 of 3 Officers Involved in Breonna Taylor Shooting Charged

Six months after Breonna Taylor’s death at the hands of Louisville police, a Jefferson County grand jury has indicted one of the three officers involved.

Detective Brett Hankison has been charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. Judge Annie O’Connell set an arrest warrant and $15,000 bond. Neither Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly nor Det. Myles Cosgrove was indicted.

Breonna Taylor, age 26, was fatally shot when three plainclothes officers, all of whom were not wearing bodycams, executed a no-knock search warrant at her apartment on March 13, 2020. Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, a registered gun owner, shot at the officers when they entered the apartment because he thought they were intruders. He injured one of the officers, prompting them to fire over 20 rounds into the apartment. Taylor was shot eight times and died at the scene.

Prior to the verdict, one of the Louisville officers involved in the shooting claimed he and his colleagues did the right thing. “Regardless of the outcome (of the Kentucky attorney general’s decision) today or Wednesday, I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night,” wrote Jonathan Mattingly in an email that has since surfaced online. “It’s sad how the good guys are demonized, and the criminals are canonized.” In the same email, he referred to protesters as “thugs.”