In the predawn hours of March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black emergency room technician, was in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Shortly after midnight, plainclothes officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department arrived to execute a search warrant as part of a narcotics investigation into a man Taylor had previously dated. The officers used a battering ram to force their way into the apartment.
Walker, believing intruders were breaking in, fired a single, legally owned handgun, striking one of the officers in the leg.
The officers—Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, Detective Myles Cosgrove, and Detective Brett Hankison—unleashed a volley of 32 shots in response. Taylor was struck multiple times in her hallway and died at the scene. No drugs were found in the apartment. Walker was uninjured and was initially arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but these charges were later permanently dismissed. Accounts differ on whether the officers announced themselves before entering. Police officials stated they did, but Walker and several neighbors said they heard no announcement.
In the aftermath, the case drew widespread condemnation and fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice. The city of Louisville later banned the use of no-knock warrants. While no officers were directly charged by the state for Taylor's death, former detective Brett Hankison faced three state counts of wanton endangerment for bullets that entered a neighboring apartment; he was acquitted of these charges in March 2022. The LMPD fired Hankison in June 2020, and Myles Cosgrove, the officer believed to have fired the fatal shot, was also terminated.
Federal authorities later took action, bringing charges against four former officers. In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice announced charges against Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, Kelly Goodlett, and Brett Hankison. Jaynes, Meany, and Goodlett were charged in relation to the falsification of the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant. Goodlett pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Hankison was indicted on federal civil rights charges for his use of excessive force. In November 2024, a federal jury convicted Hankison of violating Taylor's civil rights. The other officers involved in the shooting, Mattingly and Cosgrove, were not federally charged in her death, with prosecutors determining their use of force was justified because Walker fired first.
