Last week, the grand jury cleared the two white officers who shot Breonna Taylor.
Police executing a search warrant at Breonna Taylor’s home told investigators they knocked on her door and announced 30 to 90 seconds before breaking and entering in a raid that ended by the police who shot her, audio recordings released on Friday.
Details recently revealed by officers contrast with reports from previous witnesses, and their account has been a point of contention in the case which has garnered national attention and sparked street protests against racism and the use of force. by the police.
The Kentucky attorney general released audio recordings of the grand jury proceeding that cleared three police officers from homicide charges in Taylor’s death on Friday, offering rare insight into the inner workings of a grand jury, which is normally held secret.
Last week, the grand jury cleared the two white officers who shot Taylor and charged a third with gratuitous endangerment for stray bullets that hit a nearby apartment in the March 13 raid.
Street protesters called for officers’ arrests and demanded justice for Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician whose family won a $ 12 million wrongful death settlement from the city of Louisville.
Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who was with her, said he believed the plainclothes officers who broke in may have been Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. He fired once, injuring an officer. Police then fired 32 shots, six of which hit Taylor.
Hours later and with his voice broken with emotion, the tapes showed, Walker told police that he and Taylor were “afraid of death” as they knocked on the door, with Taylor shouting “Who is this?” ? at the top of his lungs but hearing no response.
Recordings made during three days of proceedings show that the police were baffled by the outbreak of their own gunfire. One officer said he only realized he fired his gun after the fact, while another who opened fire mistakenly feared his colleagues would be shot down by an AR-15.
The tapes also show that the grand jurors were engaged with the investigators presenting the case, dotting them with questions about why the police were not wearing body cameras and whether the police during the raid knew that other officers had. already located the central suspect of the investigation, Taylor’s. ex boyfriend.
The recordings of prosecutors’ recommendations that could have revealed how prosecutors guided the thinking of the 12-member panel were striking.
“The deliberations of the jurors and the prosecutor’s recommendations and statements were not recorded because they do not constitute evidence,” Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the special prosecutor in charge of the case, said in a statement. communicated.
In a March 25 police interview that was played out in front of the grand jury last week, the injured officer Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly said police knocked on Taylor’s door six or seven different times. , repeatedly announcing that they were police there to serve a search warrant. .
“It probably lasted between 45 seconds and a minute, knocking on the door,” Mattingly said, before police intervened.
Detective Myles Cosgrove, during his interview with police investigators, said the police knocked on the door for about 90 seconds.
Detective Brett Hankison, the officer charged with indiscriminate endangerment, estimated that there had been 30 to 45 seconds of “knock and announce, knock and announce.”
“SURREAL THING”
Several witnesses told reporters that they had not heard any announcements from the police, and Cameron admitted that the one witness who verified the police account of their announcement changed her story.
The witness first told investigators in March that he did not hear the police identify themselves but two months later, in a follow-up interview, the witness said he heard police knocking and announcing, according to an investigator who testified before the grand jury.
Cosgrove, who fired 16 shots, described the experience as disorienting, with bright muzzle flashes interrupting the darkness, upon learning that Mattingly had been shot.
He said he only realized after the fact that he had started shooting his gun. “It’s like a surreal thing,” Cosgrove said.
When the shooting started, Hankison said he shot into the apartment from outside and saw other flashes light up the room, mistakenly thinking that Walker or Taylor was holding an AR-15 or a other long gun.
“I thought they had just been executed,” Hankison, who shot 10 times, said of his colleagues.
Walker’s single shot came from a 9mm handgun that he was authorized to carry. Taylor was not armed.
Lawyers for Taylor and Walker’s family did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
After the gunfire, Walker said he collapsed to the ground when he saw Taylor was shot.
“It’s there, on the floor, like a hemorrhage,” he said, before collapsing with emotion.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
