Grand jury audio details raid that killed Breonna Taylor
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Police said they knocked and announced themselves for a minute or more before bursting into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, but her boyfriend said he did not hear officers identify themselves, according to Kentucky grand jury recordings released Friday. In the hail of gunfire that ensued, the 26-year-old Black woman was killed.
The dramatic and sometimes conflicting accounts of the March 13 raid are key to a case that has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. When police came through the door using a battering ram, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired once. He acknowledges that he may not have heard police identify themselves because of where he was in the apartment. If he’d heard them, “it changes the whole situation because there’s nothing for us to be scared of.”
The fear and confusion that played out after midnight at Taylor’s Louisville home was detailed in 15 hours of audio recordings made public in a rare release. While the recordings added rich detail about what happened as police fired 32 shots in the last moments of Taylor’s life, nothing on them appeared to change the fundamental narrative.
The recordings also do not include any discussion of potential criminal action on the part of the officers who shot Taylor because Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron determined beforehand that they had acted in self-defense. As a result, he did not seek charges against police in her killing — a recommendation the grand jury followed.
Grand jury proceedings are typically kept secret, but a court ruled that they should be released after the jury’s decision last week angered many in Louisville and around the country and set off renewed protests. One of the jurors also sued to make the proceedings public.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said it will release its own assessment of how the evidence was presented after a review of the recordings. Sherrilyn Ifill, the group’s president, said releasing the recordings “is a critical first step.”
On the March night in question, police arrived after midnight at Taylor’s apartment with a narcotics warrant. She and her boyfriend were in bed. Within minutes, she had been shot five times.
Though police had a “no knock” warrant that would have allowed them to burst in unannounced, they agreed it was better to “give them a chance to answer the door,” said Louisville police Lt. Shawn Hoover. Detective Myles Cosgrove said the officers had been told to “use our maturity as investigators to get into this house.”
In a police interview played for the grand jury, Hoover said the officers announced themselves as police and knocked three times. He estimated they waited 45 seconds to a minute before going through the door.
Another officer said they waited as long as two minutes.
Walker said he heard knocking but that police did not respond to his and Taylor’s repeated requests that whoever was at the door identify themselves. He told police that he grabbed his gun, and they both got up and walked toward the door.
“She’s yelling at the top of her lungs, and I am too at this point. No answer. No response. No nothing,” Walker said.