Black Lives Matter: Audio Reveals Final Moments Before Breonna Taylor’s Death

Louisville police said they touched and identified themselves for a minute or more before breaking into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, but her boyfriend said he did not hear officers announce, according to Kentucky grand jury recordings released Friday (time from USA). In the barrage of gunfire that followed, the 26-year-old black woman was killed.

The dramatic and contradictory accounts of the March 13 raid are key to a case that has sparked protests across the country against police brutality and systemic racism.

When police came through the door with a battering ram, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opened fire. If you had heard the police announce themselves: “Change the whole situation because there is nothing to be afraid of.”

The details were contained in hours of recordings that were made public Friday in a rare statement for procedures that are generally kept secret.

A court ruled that the material should be released after the grand jury failed to charge officers with Taylor’s murder, infuriating many in Louisville and beyond. The material does not include the jury’s deliberations or the prosecutor’s recommendations and statements, neither of which were recorded, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Louisville Police Lt. Shawn Hoover said officers with a narcotics warrant approached the door of Taylor’s apartment, announced themselves as cops and called three times.

“We knocked on the door, we said ‘police,’ we waited, I don’t know, 10 or 15 seconds. We called again, police said, we waited even longer,” Hoover said in a taped interview the same day Taylor was shot and killed. then they interpreted it. for the grand jury.

“So it was the third time we got close, it had been like 45 seconds if not a minute,” Hoover said. “And then I said, ‘Come on, let’s break it.’

Another officer said they waited up to two minutes. Whether the officers announced themselves or not has been a key issue in the case because Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he only shot at police because he feared they were intruders.

Police said they used a ram to enter the apartment, knocking on the door three times before entering. Detective Michael Nobles said the officers were making so much noise that a neighbor upstairs came out and had to tell him to go back inside.

According to grand jury recordings, Detective Jonathan Mattingly was shot as soon as he leaned into the apartment.

Mattingly said in his testimony, part of which he was previously released, that he fired four shots when he fell backward. Officer Brett Hankison said in a taped police interview that moments after the doors were knocked down he saw darkness and then “immediate illumination from the fire.”

“What I saw at the time was a figure in a shooting position and it looked like he was holding, he or she was holding, an AR-15 or a long gun, a rifle,” said Hankison, who was later indicted by the grand jury. on charges of endangering senseless by firing shots that entered another house with people inside.

Walker, in fact, was using a gun.

“We didn’t know who he was,” Walker said in his own interview with police shortly after the shooting. “If we had known who it was, that would never have happened.”

Hoover said he believed Walker and Taylor were waiting for the officers.

“In my opinion, we were ambushed,” Hoover said. “They knew we were there. I mean, heck, the neighbors knew we were there.”

About five minutes after gunfire broke out and Taylor was shot, her boyfriend dialed 911.

According to the audio of the call played for the grand jury, Walker told a dispatcher: “Someone kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend.”

Walker appeared confused when police interviewed him later. He said he did not know why the police would knock on Taylor’s door.

Agents had a “do not touch” warrant to search Taylor’s apartment for drugs. But Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has also said the agents announced themselves.

A law enforcement officer testified that the police ultimately never executed the warrant to search Taylor’s apartment.

“Was drug money or paraphernalia recovered from Apartment 4? … The answer is no,” said Herman Hall, an investigator with the state attorney general’s office. “They did not go ahead with the execution of the initial search warrant they had for Breonna Taylor’s apartment.”

Cameron, whose office led the investigation into police actions in the Taylor shooting, did not object to the release of the file.

Cameron, a Republican and the state’s first African-American attorney general, has acknowledged that he did not recommend homicide charges for the officers involved.

Cameron said that two officers who fired their guns, striking Taylor, were justified because Taylor’s boyfriend had shot them first. The groom has said that he thought someone was breaking in.

The grand jury charged Hankison with three counts of unjustified danger for shooting at a neighboring apartment. No one was injured. He has pleaded not guilty. Cameron said there was no conclusive evidence that Hankison’s shots hit Taylor.

The protesters have taken to the streets to demand more responsibility in the case. The activists, Taylor’s family and one of the jurors called for the grand jury file to be released.

– Associated Press