Louisville officer who shot Taylor says she ‘didn’t deserve to die’
News and the Louisville Courier-Journal, his first LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A media interviews on the Louisville police officer shooting that sparked who shot Breonna Taylor weeks of protests in the after he wascity.woundedby her boyfriend’s gunshot He said he and his fellow said she “didn’t deserve to officers had gone to Taylor’s die.” apartment to serve a war
Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly rant in a drug case that said Taylor, 26, an emertargeted her ex-boyfriend gency medical worker who and had to defend themwas roused from her bed by selves once they were fired police serving a narcotics upon. warrant, “didn’t do any“You want to do the right thing to deserve a death thing,” Mattingly said. “You sentence.” want to be the one who is
Mattingly spoke to ABC protecting, not up here looking to do any damage to anybody’s family.”
Mattingly and another officer, Myles Cosgrove, fired i nt o t he apartment’s front entry after Taylor’s current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot Mattingly in the leg. Walker said he thought an intruder had come through the door. Taylor was shot five times and died at the scene.
A grand jury last month charged a third officer who also fired his gun with endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but none of the three were charged in Taylor’s death.
On Tuesday, an anonymous grand juror won a court battle to speak publicly and said the panel was not given the option to consider charges related to Taylor’s death because prosecutors believed the officers were justified in using force.
Mattingly, 44, said the protests and media reports that followed the shooting unfairly compared Taylor’s death to the slaying of George Floyd in Minnesota and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
“It’s not a race thing like people wanna try to make it to be. It’s not,” he said.
Floyd died May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Two white men fatally shot Arbery while he was jogging in a neighborhood Feb. 23.
Mattingly said misinformation about the March 13 shooting spread rapidly and said city and police leaders should have acted more swiftly to dispel “false narratives” about the incident, including that police were at the wrong house and that Taylor was in her bed when she was shot.
Mattingly said he will likely leave the Louisville Police Department, since he has reached the years of service needed for retirement.