“Do not walk by yourself. This is our city. This is our town.” For months in Kentucky,
residents outraged by the killing of Breonna
Taylor campaigned for the police officers
who shot her to face charges. [bell tolls] “Commonwealth of Kentucky
v. Brett Hankison.” In September, a
grand jury investigation indicted one officer for shooting into a
neighboring apartment and no one for killing Taylor. “Is that the decision
of the grand jury? I will grant the motion
and assign bond in the amount of $15,000
full cash and issue a warrant.” “Is that it?”
“Is that the only charge?” “What about the other two?” “It can’t be it.
This can’t be it.” “No one has been
held accountable. This is injustice,
and this is a start clock for the next level
of our protest.” “Say her name.” “Breonna Taylor.” What happened
in the final minutes of Breonna Taylor’s life? A full telling of that story
has been impeded because none of the
seven police officers who raided her apartment
used body cameras, a violation of police policy. But, with the recent release
of thousands of documents and images collected during
three investigations, The Times initiated a fresh
examination of the case. We used crime scene photos
to create a precise model of Taylor’s apartment. We forensically mapped out
and retraced the first bullet, fired by Taylor’s boyfriend, and the 32 bullets that
police shot in return — through windows,
walls and ceilings. Using interviews officers
gave to investigators, we charted their movements
as they carried out the raid. And we analyzed
hours of 911 calls, grand jury proceedings and footage by the SWAT team
that arrived after the shooting. “Ma’am, can you hear us?” Members of the grand jury
have accused Kentucky’s attorney general,
Daniel Cameron, of shielding the
officers involved from homicide charges. “Our investigation found that
Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their
use of force.” “Boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom.” Sergeant Mattingly may have
been justified in returning fire when he’s fired upon, but our new analysis paints
a more complicated picture about how this raid
was compromised from beginning to end. We’ll outline the
flawed intelligence and tactical mistakes of a
hodgepodge team of officers, their failure to properly
announce their presence at Taylor’s, the chaos and excessive
use of force that ensued. “There’s another hole
right below the clock.” And we’ll explore the
damning analysis of an experienced
SWAT commander who was called to the scene
after the shooting. “We just got the feeling
that night that something really
bad happened.” The focus of the police
investigation on March 13 is not Taylor’s apartment,
but properties 10 miles away in West Louisville — — where dozens of SWAT
and police officers arrest an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s
and his associates, and seize evidence,
including drugs. These officers are wearing
their body cameras, and they carry out the raid
safely and without incident. What the SWAT team doesn’t
know is that at this time a hastily assembled team of
narcotics officers is about to raid Taylor’s
home across town. They suspect her ex-boyfriend
keeps cash or drugs there, but their intel is poor. They don’t know she
has a new boyfriend, and they think
she lives alone. When seven officers begin
the raid at 12:40 a.m., they notice the lights are
off except for the flicker of a TV in a bedroom — — suggesting they know
where Taylor is. In less than three minutes,
she would be fatally shot. Inside, Taylor had dozed off
while watching a movie with her boyfriend,
Kenneth Walker. Adjacent is the bedroom
of Taylor’s sister, but she’s not home. A hallway from the bedrooms
leads to a living area, and the apartment’s entrance
is in this breezeway. The only light is this lamp
opposite her door, where now the police
begin to stack. In this reconstruction, we hear
the official testimonies given by the two officers
nearest the door, Mattingly and Nobles; Cosgrove, who’s providing cover; and Hoover and Hankison
beside them. And we’ll hear from neighbors
and Kenneth Walker, who was interviewed by police
right after the shooting. Just as Mattingly
begins to knock, a man emerges from the
apartment directly above. He doesn’t live there
but is picking up his child after finishing work. A squabble with
Detective Brett Hankison ensues, and already
the team seems on edge. The man retreats inside. The police are supposed
to be conducting a knock-and-announce raid, but that’s not what Mattingly
says happens at first. Inside, Taylor wakes up. Whether the police announce
themselves clearly enough is a critical issue in this story
that we’ll return to later on. Not knowing who’s
at the door this late, Walker grabs his
licensed handgun. They rush to get dressed
and walk toward the door. Outside, some of the
police do hear Taylor. But after knocking and
waiting for around 45 seconds, they decided they’ve given
her enough time to respond and ram the door open. We’ll show here what the police
and Walker describe seeing next. The officers now make
a tactical mistake. Mattingly steps
into the doorway and puts himself in
what police describe as the fatal funnel,
a position vulnerable to gunfire
and hard to move from. The apartment is lit only
by the breezeway light that’s coming from
behind Mattingly, and the faint glare of the TV
in Taylor’s bedroom. Thinking it’s an intruder,
Walker aims low, shoots once and hits Mattingly in the thigh. Mattingly immediately
returns fire. Mattingly fires two more
rounds when he falls, and takes cover. Almost at the same time,
Cosgrove moves in and fires, stepping on Mattingly
in the process. He has now also put himself
in the fatal funnel, and although he’s shooting, he appears to have no idea
what’s happening. He continues shooting blindly
until he runs out of ammunition, a total of 16 rounds. In response to Walker’s shot,
Mattingly and Cosgrove together fire four shots
into a chair, cupboards, and the stove in the kitchen. Two bullets go into the ceiling and pass through the living room
in the apartment above, where the man,
his 2-year-old daughter and babysitter waited. Three more shots go
into the living room wall to the right, and the officers fired 13 rounds
down the hallway where Taylor and Walker stood. Taylor is shot six times
on both sides of her body, in the abdomen and chest,
her arm and leg, and twice in her foot. In all, these two officers
fire 22 rounds in less than a minute. An F.B.I. ballistics report
found that both of them shot Taylor, and that one of
the 16 rounds Cosgrove fired was the lethal bullet. Thinking they’re under attack,
some of the officers flee when they hear a
pause in shooting. We don’t know the precise
sequence of events, but Detective Hankison
runs to the front. But the only ones shooting
are police. Even though all the
curtains are drawn, Hankison blindly fires
five bullets through the patio windows. He moves and fires
five more rounds through the bedroom
window of Taylor’s sister, who isn’t home. Two bullets fly over
Walker and Taylor, but none hits them. The bullets that go into
the living area pass over Taylor’s sofa and kitchen table
and smash her clock. Three penetrate the wall and enter her neighbor’s
apartment. Those bullets also smash
the kitchen table, hit a wall and shatter
the patio doors at the rear. A pregnant woman, her son
and partner were home. Hankison has been charged
with wantonly endangering their lives. In total, the police
fire 32 bullets, penetrating almost every
room in Taylor’s apartment. They hit saucepans,
cereal boxes and smash into her shower. They puncture shoes,
shatter cleaning equipment and land in her
sister’s clothing. And, three minutes
after police came to search her home, a fatally wounded Taylor
is lying on the ground. Months later, when Attorney
General Daniel Cameron presented the charges against
Hankison and said that Mattingly and Cosgrove’s
actions were justified, he emphasized that police did
properly announce themselves. “Evidence shows that officers
both knocked and announced their presence
at the apartment.” But, actually, the evidence
is far from clear. In 911 calls immediately
after the shooting, Taylor’s neighbors don’t know
police are carrying out a raid. And in statements
police took afterwards, none of Taylor’s neighbors
heard the officers announce. This apartment’s
patio door was open. Two teenagers in this
apartment heard a commotion, but didn’t hear police announce through their open window,
their mom said. And the family who lived
directly above Taylor also heard nothing. In their statements and in
interviews with The Times, over a dozen neighbors say
they did not hear the police. Attorney General
Cameron’s assertion rests on the accounts
of police officers and a single witness,
Aaron Sarpee, the man collecting
his daughter that night and who saw the police
when he came outside. In his first interview
with investigators, Sarpee was asked what he heard
when he went back inside. Months later, he told police
his memory was foggy, but that he thought
officers did announce. And beyond what
the police said, this critical
grand jury conclusion rested on his entirely
inconsistent account. After the raid, the scene
outside is chaos. Officers tend to Mattingly,
but an ambulance that had been staging nearby
is nowhere to be found. They radio the SWAT
officers across town — — who are surprised by the call. They head for Taylor’s address. As SWAT arrives, close to 40 police vehicles
are already at the scene. Around this time, Taylor’s
boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, is being arrested. Walker had called 911 and neighbors had heard
his pleas for help. But at 1 a.m., almost 20 minutes
after the shooting, the police still don’t know Taylor is critically
injured inside. As Walker is
being led out, SWAT gets ready to
secure the apartment. Only now, half an hour
after the raid began, does an E.M.T.
finally check Taylor. And later, as two officers
stand guard, they take in the scene. They see Taylor’s uniform. She worked as an
emergency room technician in city hospitals. They note the bullet holes. Outside, the SWAT officers
debrief on what they’ve seen. The SWAT commander who
was called to Taylor’s home after the raid was later
interviewed by investigators. “We just got the feeling that
night that something really bad happened.” Dale Massey, a 20-year
police veteran, was highly critical
of what unfolded. He said there was no
coordination with SWAT. “We had no idea they were
going to be at that apartment that night. I would’ve advised them
100 percent not to do it.” And that executing another
warrant at the same time may have compromised
Taylor’s safety. “We treat safety,
very important, right. So, like, simultaneous warrants —
bad business.” Narcotics officers testified
that they didn’t know Taylor had a new boyfriend,
that her sister lived there or that her 2-year-old
niece regularly stayed. Massey said the
department had a history of poor intelligence gathering. “Back in the day, we would take
a lot of detective information and take it as golden. Not anymore. Because so often, there’s
no kids, there’s no dog, we’re told. There’s kids and dogs. So we have an exhaustive recon
process that we go through.” He said standing
in the doorway, the fatal funnel, as
Mattingly and Cosgrove had, was a tactical mistake. “Is it practical or is it even
common for three people to be in what we consider
the fatal funnel?” “Absolutely not. No. You never put, you know,
yourself in that situation.” And that there’s a right way
and a wrong way to conduct a raid. You knock, announce and give
people ample time to leave. “We’re not going to rush in
to get dope. We’re not going to treat — human life’s more important
than any amount of dope, right?” And, just to be clear, no drugs
were ever found at Taylor’s. His harshest criticism was
of Hankison’s blind shots into the apartment. “You have to know A,
what you’re shooting at, B, what’s in front of it,
and B, what’s behind it. There’s no other
way you can operate. It was just an egregious act.” Under Kentucky law,
Kenneth Walker had a right to stand
his ground against what he believed
was an aggressor. And the police, in turn,
have a right to self-defense. But in this analysis,
the killing of Breonna Taylor resulted from poor planning
compounded by reckless execution. Louisville has instituted
police reforms, and Taylor’s family received
a substantial settlement, but the case isn’t closed. Investigations and lawsuits
are ongoing. And nine months after
Taylor was killed, her family is seeking
a fresh inquiry into the officers involved.
