Police release details of Breonna Taylor investigation

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Police files released Wednesday show contacts between Breonna Taylor and a man she dated previously who was suspected of drug dealing, but raise new questions about what led narcotics investigators to the raid of her home that resulted in her death in a burst of police gunfire.

Lt. Dale Massey, a member of the Louisville Metro Police Department SWAT team that arrived on the scene, described the execution of the warrant as an “egregious act.” He told investigators he and other SWAT members felt that after seeing what had occurred and through their interactions with another police officer that “something really bad happened.”

Massey’s comments were included in extensive testimony and other evidence that shed light on the internal Louisville police review of Taylor’s death. Protesters in Louisville and elsewhere around the country have demanded accountability for her killing.

The police files contain conflicting information about when the contacts ended between Taylor and her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.

In a recorded jailhouse conversation on the day she died, Glover said he and Taylor had not “been around each other in over two months.”

MORGAN CITY, La. — For the sixth time in the Atlantic hurricane season, people in Louisiana are once more fleeing the state’s barrier islands and sailing boats to safe harbor while emergency officials ramp up command centers and consider ordering evacuations.

The storm being watched Wednesday was Hurricane Delta, the 25th named storm of the Atlantic’s unprecedented hurricane season. Forecasts placed most of Louisiana within Delta’s path, with the latest National Hurricane Center estimating landfall in the state on Friday.

The center’s forecasters warned of winds that could gust well above 100 mph and up to 11 feet of ocean water potentially rushing onshore when the storm’s center hits land.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that 2 million Houston voters cannot receive unsolicited mail ballot applications from local elections officials who are dramatically expanding ways to vote in November in the nation’s third-largest county, a key battleground in Texas.

The decision by the all-Republican court is the latest defeat in a string of losses for Democrats whose efforts to change Texas voting laws during the coronavirus pandemic have largely failed.

Polls show unusually tight races this year in America’s biggest red state, intensifying battles over voting access. Texas is one of just five states not allowing widespread mail-in voting this year.