According to the lawsuit, Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend thought the plainclothes officers were criminals trying to break in.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, was asleep in her Kentucky home just after midnight on March 13 when police entered with a search warrant in a drug investigation and opened fire, killing her. Now, a lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family accuses the officers of wrongful death, excessive force and gross negligence. Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officials said officers engaged in the shooting after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at them first. But the lawsuit alleges that police did not identify themselves and that Walker, a licensed gun owner, thought someone was breaking in. Neither Walker nor Taylor had a criminal history of drugs or violence, the suit says. Taylor had been working as an EMT at emergency rooms at two hospitals, helping with the coronavirus response, her family said. “Breonna loves life and she loved to help people and she loved her family. She didn’t deserve what they did to her,” Tamika Palmer, her mother, told CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan. “I was more concerned for her washing her hands than her dying at home,” Palmer added. The lawsuit, obtained by CBS News, says LMPD officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankinson and Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, who are named as defendants, arrived at the home in plainclothes and unmarked vehicles. According to the lawsuit, they had a “knock and announce” search warrant for Taylor’s apartment, and were looking for a man who lived in a different part of Louisville who had already been apprehended by LMPD the previous day.
