BREONNA MOM IN ANGUISH
Shares pain after 2 cops cleared in slay 2 shot Ky. officers will be OK
Breonna Taylor’s mother broke her silence Thursday, sharing her despair over the lack of charges in her daughter’s death after officials identified the man who allegedly shot two police officers Wednesday.
The officers — one shot in his hip, the other in his abdomen — were expected to make full recoveries, officials said.
Larynzo Johnson, 26, was taken into custody at 8:40 p.m. Wednesday, according to an arrest citation listing two charges of first-degree assault on a police officer and multiple counts of first-degree wanton endangerment.
Taylor’s mom Tamika Palmer made her first public comment Thursday ahead of a planned Friday morning press conference.
“It’s still Breonna Taylor for me #ThesystemfailedBreonna,” she wrote in an Instagram post that included a painterly image of her daughter.
A grand jury decided Wednesday that only one of the officers involved in the botched drug raid that ended Taylor’s life would be charged, and his charges relate to the wanton endangerment of Taylor’s three white neighbors.
The two other officers who shot into Taylor’s apartment 22 times, striking Taylor six times, were found to have been “justified” in their use of deadly force, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said.
The announcement touched off immediate protests in Louisville, leading up to the shooting of the officers shortly before a 9 p.m. curfew was enforced amid a local state of emergency.
Johnson is accused of firing “multiple bullets at officers” who were conducting crowd control at Broadway and Brook St. in downtown Louisville at around 8:30 p.m., his citation states.
“The listed subject was seen by witnesses firing a handgun at officers and running from the scene,” the arrest paperwork obtained by the Daily News says.
“When the listed subject was detained, he was found in possession of a handgun. Video of the shooting has been recovered and shows the listed subject shooting at officers.”
Maj. Aubrey Gregory was struck in the hip and was later treated at the hospital and released, Louisville Metro Police Department interim Chief Robert Schroeder said at a Thursday press conference.
Officer Robinson Desroches was shot in the
abdomen and underwent surgery, police said.
“He is in stable condition and expected to recover,” Schroeder said. “We are extremely fortunate these two officers will recover.”
Louisville police arrested 127 people during the overnight protests.
Mayor Greg Fischer said Thursday he is extending the 9 p.m. curfew through the weekend.
The grand jury returned its three charges of wanton endangerment against former LMPD officer Brett Hankison, who was previously fired from the force in June.
Taylor, a Black EMT, emergency room technician and aspiring nurse, was home with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when the cops used a battering ram to break through the couple’s door shortly after midnight while serving a no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation
involving a man Taylor previously knew.
Cameron said Wednesday that Mattingly was “the first and only officer to enter the residence,” and that he allegedly saw the couple standing together at the “end of the hall,” with Walker “holding a gun, arms extended in a shooting stance,” Cameron said.
Walker, a licensed gun owner, never heard the police announce themselves and believed he and Taylor were the victims of a home invasion, lawyers for Taylor’s family said.
He fired a warning shot with his 9-mm. firearm, striking Mattingly in the thigh.
“Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said in his clearly confused 911 call.
Mattingly fired six shots while Cosgrove fired his weapon 16 times, Cameron said. It’s believed Cosgrove fired the fatal shot, the prosecutor said.
“It’s heartbreaking, and it’s outrageous,” civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who represents Taylor’s family, told The News. “It’s quite clear under the self-defense laws in Kentucky that it’s never justifiable to shoot or kill an innocent bystander who doesn’t have a weapon and is not threatening you in any manner.”
He said Walker, meanwhile, had a right to defend his home.
“I believe Kenneth Walker was absolutely within his right to defend his castle, have his Second Amendment rights because they always believed that these were intruders. You heard from the present tense on the 911 call. You could tell what his mentality is.”
Crump said the family’s legal team identified 12 neighbors who said they never heard the police announce themselves.
“The one person who said he heard the police changed his story,” Crump told The News. “This is who Daniel Cameron is trying to use to exonerate these officers for killing Breonna Taylor.”
Another lawyer representing Taylor’s family called the charging decision “a gross miscarriage of justice.”
“Seems pretty clear that the attorney general had his mind made up to present the case to a grand jury in a manner that would portray the officers as victims,” lawyer Sam Aguiar said in an email to The News.
“For him to say his own office concluded that the officers were justified is essentially saying, ‘ There’s no way we were going to ever prosecute these officers for what they did to Breonna Taylor,’” he said.