A Kentucky grand jury announced Wednesday that Brett Hankison, a former Louisville Metro Police Department detective, has been indicted on three charges of wanton endangerment after a police raid in March resulted in the killing of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman and emergency medical worker. None of the three officers involved in the raid were directly charged for their role in Taylor's death — Hankison's charge is related to firing his gun into a neighboring apartment, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the investigation found the other two officers were justified in their use of force.
The officers entered the 26-year-old Taylor's apartment on the night of March 13 with a no-knock warrant, which have since been banned by Louisville's Metro Council, during a narcotics investigation. The warrant was connected to a suspect who did not live at the apartment and no drugs were found inside, but police exchanged fire with Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, after bursting in, and the officers shot Taylor multiple times. (Cameron said ballistics analysis created reasonable doubt as to which officer fired the fatal shot.) Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but the case was dropped, and he maintains he fired in self-defense, thinking an intruder had broken in.
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