Officer Involved in Breonna Taylor Shooting Posts $15,000 Bail Within Hours of Being Booked

By Aris Folley, The Hill

24 September 20

 

rett Hankison, the sole Louisville police officer who was indicted Wednesday in the raid that resulted in the killing of Breonna Taylor, has posted a $15,000 bail within hours of being booked at a Kentucky jail. 

According to local media, Hankinson was brought into the Shelby County Detention Center after a Kentucky grand jury indicted him on three counts of wanton endangerment over the March 13 raid. He was released not long after posting bail, an official confirmed to The Hill.

He could face up to five years in jail for each of the counts.

Hankinson was the only officer involved in the shooting to be indicted by the grand jury, officials announced Wednesday. However, the charges are not tied directly to the shooting, which means none of the three officers have so far been charged in the killing of Taylor. 

Taylor was a Black EMT who died at the age of 26 after being fatally shot by Louisville police in her apartment. Three police officers -- Hankinson, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove -- had arrived at her home in plainclothes late at night after obtaining a no-knock search warrant as part of a drug case targeting Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. 

The office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who served as a special prosecutor in the case, said in a release detailing the completion of the investigation into Taylor’s death on Wednesday that officers were “advised by superiors to knock and announce their presence in serving this specific search warrant.”

The office pointed to a single witness they said was “near in proximity” to Taylor’s home to corroborate claims that the officers knocked and announced their presence at her residence. 

However, Cameron was pressed by a reporter who noted that a number of other witnesses had not corroborated claims that the officers knocked and announced their presence at Taylor’s home during the raid. 

“[The grand jury] got to hear and listen to all the testimony and made the determination that Detective Hankison was the one that needed to be indicted,” Cameron said in response. 

After the officers entered Taylor’s home on March 13, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who is licensed to carry, fired shots, believing the officers were intruders. The officers returned fire, fatally striking Taylor. No drugs were uncovered in the raid.

Cameron's office said the 26-year-old was hit with six bullets in total. 

Ahead of his indictment on Wednesday, Hankinson was the only officer involved in the shooting to be fired for “display[ing] an extreme indifference to the value of human life.” The two other officers were put on administrative reassignment.

Cameron’s office said Hankinson fired 10 shots during the raid and that “some bullets traveled through apartment four and into apartment three, before some exited that apartment.”

“At the time, three residents of apartment three were at home, including a male, a pregnant female, and a child,” the office continued, though it said there is “no conclusive evidence that any bullets fired from Detective Hankinson’s weapon” hit Taylor.

Mattingly, Cameron’s office said, fired six times, and Cosgrove fired 16 times. Those shots, Cameron said Wednesday, were “justified,” however, because Walker was first to fire.

The decision announced by the grand jury on Wednesday has prompted widespread outrage from the public, lawmakers and celebrities who say more should be done to hold the officers accountable for Taylor’s death.