Only officer charged in the Breonna Taylor case is found not guilty of wanton endangerment

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The only police officer to face charges over the killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky in March 2020 was acquitted on Thursday, after a dramatic trial which saw Taylor’s mother storm out of the court when the former officer broke down in tears on the stand. 

Brett Hankison, 45, was on Thursday afternoon found not guilty of three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots that ripped into a neighboring apartment. 

The panel of eight men and four women on the jury heard five days of witness testimony, and delivered its verdict about three hours after it took the case following closing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys. 

‘Justice was done. The verdict was proper and we’re thrilled,’ said defense attorney Stew Mathews, speaking outside the courthouse. 

‘He was doing his job as a police officer.’

Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, accompanied by and a group of friends and family, left the courthouse without commenting after the verdict. 

Hankison was tried for firing shots during the raid that went through a sliding-glass side door and a window of Taylor’s apartment, and into a unit next door, where a couple lived with their five-year-old son. 

 The raid left Taylor, 26, dead. 

The defense never contested the ballistics evidence presented to the court, but said he fired 10 bullets because he thought his fellow officers were ‘being executed.’ 

Had Hankison been found guilty, he faced one to five years in prison for each charge. 

Hankison did not appear outside the courtroom after the verdict was read, although the defense noted they were pleased with the outcome.

When asked what might have swayed the jury, Mathews replied: I think it was absolutely the fact that he was doing his job as a police officer.

‘The jury felt like you go out and perform your duty and your brother officer gets shot, you got a right to defend yourself. Simple as that.’

Barbara Maines Whaley, the assistant Kentucky Attorney General, told reporters at the courthouse she respected the jury’s verdict but had no further comment. 

Mathews did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Taylor’s family or her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was with her during the raid. 

‘Ms Taylor’s family, she didn’t need to die that night’: Hankison broke down in tears on the stand while giving evidence

Breonna Taylor’s mother stormed out of the court room on Wednesday as Hankison sobbed on the stand while giving evidence. 

He outlined the events of the botched no-knock warrant raid, saying officers were told Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was alone in the apartment at the time of the raid. They were trying to arrest him for a drug crime.

Hankison added that he was shocked to learn the 26-year-old woman was in the apartment after the gunfire had broken out.

‘He was supposed to be alone. There wasn’t supposed to be a girl inside,’ Hankison said as he started to cry.

Addressing Palmer and Taylor’s other relatives, a tearful Hankinson said: ‘Ms. Taylor’s family, she didn’t need to die that night.’

The prosecution cut him off. Palmer then stormed out of the courtroom. 

Hankison also broke down in tears as he testified that he believed Walker was armed with an AR-15 rifle when he fired at police officers, thinking they were introducers. 

Walker was not armed with a rifle but instead fired at officers with a 9mm handgun. 

Hankison said that because of the poor visibility, Walker’s pose, and the bright flash of the gun, he believed the officers were being shot at with a rifle. 

‘It appeared to me like they’re being executed with this rifle,’ Hankison said, as he started crying once more, recalling the moment Walker shot Sgt. Jon Mattingly in the leg. 

When asked how he responded, Hankison said he ran to the side of the house and returned fire through sliding glass doors.

‘I felt helpless that I had a handgun fighting against a rifle,’ he said.  

He said that due to the darkness and the fact that the sliding glass doors had blinders on them, he fired his weapon at where he believed Walker was in order to assist his fellow officers. 

He said the chaotic shootout, where six stray bullets fired by Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove struck and killed Taylor, lasted between five to ten seconds. 

Hankison added that the incident was the first time he ever fired his weapon while in the line of duty since joining the police department in 2003. 

Although the former officer fired 10 shots near the side door of the Louisville apartment complex, prosecutors said the bullets also endangered Taylor’s neighbors, including a couple and their unborn child. 

But in closing arguments on Thursday, prosecutors cast doubt on what Hankison said he saw, challenging whether he could have looked through Taylor’s front door when police broke it open with a battering ram.

‘He was never in the doorway,’ Assistant Kentucky Attorney General Barbara Maines Whaley told the jury. 

Referring to Taylor she added: ‘His wanton conduct could have multiplied her death by three, easily.’ 

Whaley also reminded the jury that none of the other officers who testified recalled Hankison being in the doorway before the gunfire began. 

All the shells from his weapon were found in the parking lot, among a row of cars.

She said while other officers were in the line of fire of a single shot fired by Taylor’s boyfriend, Hankison was ‘over here, shooting wildly through sliding-glass doors covered with vertical blinds and drapes.’ 

Defense attorney Stewart Mathews told the jury in his closing argument on Thursday that Hankison thought he was doing the right thing, and was not a criminal who belongs in prison.

‘He did what he thought he had to do in that instant. This all happened in such a short span,’ Mathews said.

During his testimony, the former narcotics detective admitted to firing through Taylor’s patio doors and bedroom window, but said he did so to save his fellow officers. 

Asked if he did anything wrong that night, he said ‘absolutely not.’  

Hankison also explained that officers are trained to get out of tight spots during shootings, known as a ‘fatal funnel,’ in order to secure their safety and put them in a better position to remove a threat. 

He denied the possibility that he could have shot fellow officers when he was firing at the location of the gunfire he saw inside the apartment, adding that as the situation calmed, Walker stepped out of the apartment with his hands up. 

Hankison instructed him to come closer as he questioned the man about the police shooting. 

Hankison claimed Walker denied firing at police and instead blamed Taylor, saying she was the one to fire at the officers. 

‘That kind of shook me,’ Hankison said, as he explained that the raid was supposed to take place when Walker was alone, to arrest him on drug trafficking charges. 

Hankison, who was fired by Louisville Metro Police for shooting blindly during the raid, added that the incident was the first time he ever fired his weapon while in the line of duty.

He joined the police department in 2003. 

A 20-year veteran K-9 officer assigned to handle a drug-sniffing dog during the raid, Hankison said he was positioned behind an officer with a battering ram, and could see the shadowy silhouette of a person ‘in a shooting stance’ with what looked like an AR-15 rifle as Taylor’s door swung open.

No long gun was found – only the handgun of Walker, who told Louisville Police investigators he thought intruders were breaking in. 

Investigators determined Walker fired the shot that passed through the leg of Sgt. John Mattingly, who along with officer Myles Cosgrove, returned fire. 

A total of 32 rounds were fired by police. Walker wasn’t hit.

Whaley said other officers next to Cosgrove and Mattingly chose not to fire, and there was no evidence of any shots from a long rifle at the scene.

‘Nobody got shot with an AR because there never was one,’ she said. 

Breonna Taylor’s terrified neighbor described how he and his pregnant girlfriend narrowly escaped bullets that came through the drywall of his apartment

Last week on the trial’s opening day, the first witness, Cody Etherton, described how he and his expectant girlfriend Chelsey Napper were jolted awake that night by the sound of Taylor’s door being breached. 

Thinking someone was breaking down his door, Etherton said he jumped out of bed to investigate, and barely dodged bullets that penetrated a wall they shared with Taylor’s apartment.

‘I pretty much knew it was gunfire going through the wall. I do remodeling for a living, so when drywall started hitting my face, I pretty much knew. I hit the floor and went back into the bedroom,’ he said. ‘I don´t even remember how many shots I heard because it was so chaotic.’

Etheron added:  ‘Another one or two inches and I woulda gotten shot. I would have never gotten to meet my son.’

He said he went outside after the shooting stopped, looked through Taylor´s open door and heard a man saying ‘breathe, baby, breathe.’ 

Police then ordered him back into his apartment, but he said he kept watching through his peephole and could see a black man being arrested. 

Later, Etherton said he and his girlfriend looked through Taylor’s door, and saw a body covered in a white sheet.

Chelsey Napper, who was pregnant at the time, called 911 twice after bullets pierced a wall she shared with Taylor and shattered her apartment’s glass patio door.

‘It was so scary and crazy I didn’t know what was going on,’ Napper testified on Tuesday. She lived in the apartment with her boyfriend and her 5-year-old son.

It ‘sounded like somebody set off a bomb or something’ outside their apartment, she testified.

Napper said she and Etherton were stuck for hours in the apartment and at one point police aimed guns at Etherton when he looked out the shattered glass door. She said she learned days later that it was the police who shot into their apartment and a battering ram knocking down Taylor’s door that had startled her.

In giving his evidence on Wednesday, Hankison apologized to the couple. 

‘I saw Ms. Napper and Mr. Etherton up here for the first time, and I felt sincere empathy for them. If my daughter was shot at and bullets came into our house, that would be very concerning, and I apologize for that,’ he said on the stand.

The killing of Taylor loomed over the trial, though prosecutors insisted in opening statements that the case wasn’t about her death or the police decisions that led to the March 13, 2020, raid. Jurors were shown a single image of her body, barely discernible at the end of the hallway.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who had been settling down for bed when officers broke through her door, was shot multiple times and died at the scene.

Kentucky Attorney General David Cameron’s prosecutors asked a grand jury to indict Hankison on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but declined to seek charges against any officers involved in Taylor’s death. Protesters who had walked the streets for months were outraged.

Taylor’s name, along with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery – black men who died in encounters with police and white pursuers – became rallying cries during racial justice protests seen around the world in 2020.

The jury of 10 men and five women was selected after several days of questioning from a pool expanded to about 250 people. Before deliberations, the jury was reduced to eight men and four women after three alternates were dismissed. The judge declined to release details about their race or ethnicity. 

The city of Louisville, the largest in Kentucky, settled a wrongful death suit with Taylor’s family for $12million in September 2020.