Former officer’s shots were ‘like a drive-by shooting’ during Breonna Taylor raid, prosecutors say

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Federal prosecutors told a jury Wednesday that a former Louisville police detective’s actions resembled a “drive-by shooting” when he fired 10 bullets into the side of Breonna Taylor’s apartment the night she was shot by police. shot dead.

That former detective, Brett Hankison, could not have seen what he was shooting the night of the 2020 raid, prosecutors argued during closing statements in Hankison’s federal retrial. A jury of six men and six women began deliberating in the afternoon on two charges that Hankison’s shots violated the civil rights of Taylor and her neighbors. The misdemeanor charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison if Hankison is convicted.

Hankison’s federal trial last year ended in a mistrial when a jury deadlocked after failing to reach a verdict. That was him acquitted in 2022 in a state trial for wanton endangerment.

Hankison, 48, began shooting after a fellow officer was struck by a bullet shot by Taylor’s boyfriend, who was in the apartment. Officers returned fire at the door, killing Taylor. When the shooting started, Hankison walked away from the door, went around a corner and fired a volley of shots at Taylor’s sliding glass door and a window.

“The defendant violated one of the most fundamental rules of deadly force: If they can’t see the person they’re shooting at, they can’t pull the trigger,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Songer argued during his closing statement. Several officers and Louisville Police Chief Paul Humphrey testified during the case that officers should not shoot without being able to identify a target.

Hankison’s shots hit no one, although they flew into a neighbor’s apartment and nearly hit two people inside.

Songer said Hankison “immediately shot, one after the other, at opposite ends of the apartment, like a drive-by shooting.”

But Hankison’s lawyers painted a different picture of the night of Taylor’s death, which sparked months of protests over police brutality in 2020.

They said Hankison acted to save his fellow officers “in a very tense, very chaotic” situation that lasted about 12 seconds.

His attorneys emphasized that Hankison volunteered to assist in the raid that evening, that officers were not told by their lookout that there was more than one person in Taylor’s apartment, and that they were not aware that Taylor’s apartment was a shared wall with another apartment. behind it.

“This case is about Brett Hankison’s 10 shots that never hit anyone,” his attorney, Don Malarcik, said during his closing arguments. “Brett Hankison is accused of violating the constitutional rights of people he never met and never knew existed.”

Hankison testified earlier this week that he believed a person armed with an AR-15 was shooting at officers from the apartment, and that he stepped aside and returned fire upon seeing muzzle flashes through the glass door and window on the side of the apartment unit. Another officer said in testimony earlier this week that the shots were the loudest he had ever heard.

But Taylor’s friend, Kenneth Walker, had a pistol, not a rifle, and he fired a single shot that former Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly and another officer at the door returned 22 shots, some of which struck Taylor. Malarcik said Mattingly was hit in the femoral artery and was 90 seconds away from death before other officers treated him at the scene.

Hankison “did exactly what he had to do,” Malarcik said. “He acted to save lives.”

Mattingly testified earlier this week that he saw a person with a gun standing at the end of the hallway before he was shot. Walker later told police he thought an intruder was breaking in when police broke down the door.

Hankison was one of them four officers who were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. The two charges against him carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. The three other former officers charged were involved in drafting the search warrant.