Mom speaks about Breonna Taylor’s death

Breonna Taylor’s mom described her relentless grief on the five-month anniversary of her daughter’s death Thursday and gave new details of her first meeting with Kentucky’s top prosecutor.

“One hundred and fifty days. Five months. Yeah. Every day is still March 13,” Tamika Palmer said wearily as she stood outside Louisville City Hall.

“There definitely shouldn’t be another Breonna Taylor, anywhere. It’s definitely bigger than Breonna. Five months. I’m grateful to everybody. I’m grateful for people who are saying her name,” Palmer said as she stood with her lawyers Benjamin Crump and Lonita Baker.

“The thing is, we can’t get discouraged,” she said.

Asked about her Wednesday meeting with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron — the first so far — Palmer said she was doing her best to tolerate the painfully slow probe of how her EMT daughter was shot eight times by police inside her own apartment shortly after midnight on March 13.

She said Cameron, who’s faced criticism for the pace of his investigation, told her he “wants to have the right answer.”

“He doesn’t want to rush through it,” Palmer said. “So, for me, I’m trying to accept that and be patient with that. Because I definitely want him to come out with the right answer.”

Taylor, 26, died when three plainclothes Louisville Metropolitan Police officers used a battering ram to burst into her apartment without warning while serving a “no knock” search warrant connected to a narcotics investigation.

Police were searching for a former friend of Taylor’s who allegedly received a package at her address in the past.

Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, 27, were in bed at the time and thought they were the victims of a home invasion, Crump previously told The News.

Walker, a licensed gun owner, used his legal firearm to fire a shot in self-defense, Crump said.

“Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said in his distressed 911 call.

Officer

Brett

Hankison was terminated from the force in June after an internal investigation found he “blindly” fired 10 rounds into the apartment, LMPD Chief Robert Schroeder said in a letter.

Hankison “displayed an extreme indifference to the value of human life” when he “wantonly and blindly” opened fire, the chief said.

The officer unleashed his rounds “without supporting facts that [his] deadly force was directed at a person [who] posed an immediate threat of danger or serious injury,” the chief wrote.

“In fact, the ten rounds you fired were into a patio door and window which were covered with material that completely prevented you from verifying any person as an immediate threat or more importantly p y any y innocent persons present,” the chief wrote.

The other two officers — Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove — were placed on administrative reassignment after the botched raid, as was Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the no-knock warrant.

Baker said Thursday that a meeting with Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer on Wednesday involved discussion of the ways the city can do more to address the family’s concerns while everyone waits for the FBI to finish a ballistics report and the attorney general to announce a charging decision.

“At a minimum, one of officers can be terminated right now for lying on a search warrant,” Baker said.

Crump previously alleged Jaynes lied on the paperwork asking for the “no knock” warrant when he claimed he verified through a U.S. postal inspector that the suspect in the drug case was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment.

A U.S. postal inspector in Louisville told WDRB back in May that police did not use his office to verify that a drug suspect was receiving packages at Taylor’s address.

The inspector, Tony Gooden, said a different agency had asked in January to look into whether Taylor’s residence was receiving suspicious mail, and his office concluded it was not.

“There’s no packages of interest going there,” Gooden told WDRB.

“We know that the police officer lied on that probablecause affidavit to entice the judge to sign this ‘no knock’ warrant that led to the execution of Breonna Taylor,” Crump said Thursday. “If you lie on your job, that is a grounds for termination.”