Trial of officer charged in Breonna Taylor case begins in Kentucky
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[February 24, 2022]
By Daniel Trotta
(Reuters) -The trial of a white former
Kentucky police officer charged with wanton endangerment during the 2020
shooting death of Breonna Taylor began on Wednesday, casting a spotlight
on another case in the United States that sparked a summer of protests
against racial injustice two years ago.
Detective Brett Hankison, 45, whose stray bullets hit a neighboring
apartment in the city of Louisville during a botched execution of a
search warrant in March 2020, was the only officer charged in the case.
Kentucky Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley reminded the jury in
her opening argument on Wednesday that the case was not about Taylor.
Rather, she said it concerned whether Hankison exhibited "extreme
indifference to human life" when firing the bullets that endangered
Taylor's neighbors, shattered their glass patio door, and caused drywall
to fall on one of them, Cody Etherton.
Etherton testified on Wednesday that he awoke that March night to a
boom, then heard several shots and felt debris falling on him after he
left his room.
When his glass patio door shattered, Etherton said he went to check it
out, whereupon officers pointed guns at him and told him to put his
hands out through the broken glass. "It was just reckless," he said.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/24/images/ads/current/LPL_small%201.gif)
"There's not going to be any dispute about the evidence," said
Hankison's attorney, Stew Mathews, in his opening argument. "The issue
is, what was the reasoning behind his firing those shots?"
The death of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician
who was unarmed, along with the killings of two Black men - George Floyd
in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia - captured
international attention and sparked weeks of protests over police
violence against Blacks and other minority groups.
Calls to ban no-knock warrants also intensified after the death of
Taylor, who was not the subject of the search warrant.
Hankison's trial in Jefferson County Circuit Court has failed to satisfy
activists who believe police got off too easily after Kentucky Attorney
General Daniel Cameron, the lead investigator, said police were
justified in using deadly force.
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![](../images/022422PIX/news_J17.jpg)
Former Louisville police detective Brett Hankison poses for a
booking photograph at Shelby County Detention Center in Shelbyville,
Kentucky, U.S. September 23, 2020. Shelby County Detention
Center/Handout via REUTERS
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/24/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png) The charge against Hankison, who
pleaded not guilty, is a Class D felony punishable by up to five
years in prison. Jury selection began on Feb. 3.
A grand jury cleared the two white officers who actually shot Taylor
but found reason to charge Hankison for endangering neighbors in the
adjacent apartment.
When police burst into Taylor's home while serving a search warrant,
her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, who was with her, fired one round from
a 9 mm handgun that he was licensed to carry, wounding one officer
in the leg.
Police responded by firing 32 rounds, hitting Taylor six times.
Hankison fired 10 of those shots from outside the apartment and
through a sliding glass patio door that had the blinds drawn. Some
of his shots pierced the wall and entered the next-door home
occupied by a child, a pregnant woman and a man.
Hankison told a grand jury he opened fire once the shooting started.
As he saw flashes light up the room, he said he mistakenly believed
one of the occupants was holding an AR-15 or other long gun as his
colleagues came under assault.
"I thought they were just being executed," Hankison said of his
fellow officers.
Instead, mostly what he heard was other police firing their weapons.
Police Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, who was wounded by Walker's
single shot, fired six times and Detective Myles Cosgrove fired 16
shots, the investigation found.
Police wanted to search the home in connection with a drug
investigation in which Taylor's ex-boyfriend was a suspect.
Taylor's family won a $12 million wrongful death settlement from the
city of Louisville.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting by Julia Harte;
Editing by Mark Porter and Bill Berkrot)
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