On the two-year anniversary that Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville police, the only officer charged in connection with their failed raid has been found not guilty of endangering Taylor’s neighbors.
Brett Hankison was involved in a police raid on March 13,2020 in which he fired bullets “through Taylor’s window and sliding glass door that went into a neighboring apartment where three people were present.”
Despite wide-scale protests, no cops were charged for killing Taylor. Hankison was the only officer charged, and it was for felony wanton endangerment of the three neighbors— a man, a pregnant woman, and her 5-year-old son.
As NPR reports, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron:
determined that the officers fired into the woman’s apartment in self-defense after her boyfriend, who was in the apartment with her, shot at them first. Cameron, who is Black, did not give a grand jury considering the case the option of charging those officers in connection with Taylor’s death, though he acknowledged that her death was heartbreaking.
Had Hankison been convicted in the endangerment trial, he would have faced one to five years in prison for each of the three charges, as per CNN.
WATCH: Still Saying Her Name: Breonna Taylor One Year Later
“The defense argued that Hankison acted to defend his fellow officers — including one who had been shot — in a chaotic situation,” CNN reports.
“Justice was done. The verdict was proper and we are thrilled,” defense attorney Stewart Mathews said.