Killing of Breonna Taylor

Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency-room technician, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020. At least seven Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers forced entry into her apartment while executing a warrant connected to a narcotics investigation. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside with her; he said he did not hear the officers identify themselves and believed they were intruders. Walker fired one shot, which he described as a warning shot, striking Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly, Officer Myles Cosgrove, and Detective Brett Hankison returned fire, discharging 32 rounds combined. Cosgrove was determined to have fired the shot that killed Taylor, who was struck five or six times in a hallway. Hankison fired ten rounds from outside the apartment through a covered sliding glass door and window; none of his shots hit anyone inside, though bullets entered a neighboring occupied apartment.

The warrant named Taylor's apartment as a possible location for drugs or drug proceeds tied to a separate narcotics investigation into her former boyfriend. A U.S. postal inspector later stated that a claim in the supporting affidavit — that packages to Taylor's address were being monitored — had not occurred, prompting an internal LMPD investigation into how the warrant was obtained. According to police testimony to the grand jury, Taylor's apartment was never searched after the shooting.

Walker was charged with first-degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer; a judge dismissed the charges with prejudice in March 2021. LMPD fired Hankison in June 2020 for his use of force during the raid, and fired Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who had sought the warrant, in January 2021. In September 2020, the city of Louisville agreed to pay Taylor's family $12 million and to reform police practices, settling a wrongful-death lawsuit her family had filed in May 2020.

A state grand jury indicted Hankison in September 2020 on three counts of wanton endangerment for shots that entered a neighboring apartment; neither he nor the other two officers were indicted over Taylor's death. Some grand jurors later said the panel was not asked to consider homicide charges against the officers. A Kentucky jury acquitted Hankison of the endangerment charges in March 2022.

In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Hankison with federal civil-rights violations and charged Jaynes, Sgt. Kyle Meany, and former Detective Kelly Goodlett with conspiracy and obstruction related to the warrant affidavit. Goodlett pleaded guilty later that month. Hankison's first federal trial ended in a mistrial in November 2023; a retrial concluded on November 1, 2024, when a jury found him guilty of depriving Taylor of her civil rights through excessive force, while acquitting him of a related charge involving her neighbors. In July 2025, he was sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release; he was released from prison in December 2025 while his conviction is under appeal. Charges against Jaynes and Meany, narrowed by a 2024 court ruling, remained pending as of the most recent reporting.