A grand jury on Wednesday indicted one of three police officers involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor in her Louisville apartment. However, the charges relate to the firing of shots into the home next door – and not Taylor’s killing. A grand jury indicted former officer Brett Hankison on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. The other two involved in the shooting, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were not indicted. A wanton endangerment charge is a a felony that carries one to five years in prison if Hankison is convicted. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest and set a $15,000 cash bond.
Taylor, 26, was shot during the serving of a “no-knock” search warrant on March 13 related to a narcotics investigation. The officers arrived without warning and drew resistance from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who said he didn’t know it was police who entered the apartment and was alarmed by the sudden interruption. Taylor was not the subject of the raid, and she had no criminal history.
Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, and co-counsels Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker, released a statement in reaction to Wednesday’s announcement: “This is outrageous and offensive to Breonna Taylor’s memory. It’s yet another example of no accountability for the genocide of persons of color by white police officers. If Hankison’s behavior constituted wanton endangerment of the people in the apartments next to hers, then it should also be considered wanton endangerment of Breonna. In fact, it should have been ruled wanton murder. How ironic and typical that the only charges brought in this case were for shots fired into the apartment of a white neighbor, while no charges were brought for the shots fired into the Black neighbor’s apartment or into Breonna’s residence.”
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