Kentucky Cop Who Killed Breonna Taylor Charged With Wanton Endangerment
A grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky, has indicted Detective Brett Hankison in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, charging him with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment.
No charges were filed against Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove, the other two police officers who were at the scene the night Taylor was fatally shot. Notably, no murder charges were filed against any of the men.
First-degree wanton endangerment is a felony that comes with a sentence of one to five years in prison under Kentucky law. Jefferson County Circuit Judge Annie O’Connell issued a warrant for Hankison’s arrest in a Wednesday hearing and set his bail at $15,000.
The charges were tied to shots fired into neighbouring apartments, not those shot inside Taylor’s. O’Connell read the charges aloud, linking each to the occupants of the three apartments that Hankison “wantonly” shot into by listing their initials.
She did not say BT for “Breonna Taylor,” suggesting that the grand jury did not deem the shots fired into her apartment as meeting the bar for “wanton endangerment.”
Mattingly and Cosgrove have been on paid administrative leave since the March incident; Hankison was fired in June after a review found the detective “wantonly and blindly” fired 10 rounds into Taylor’s apartment.
The city of Louisville reached a $12 million settlement with the 26-year-old’s family last week, and also agreed to undertake police reforms like establishing a housing credit program for officers to live in certain low-income areas.
At 1:00 a.m. on the morning of March 13, the plainclothes officers shot Taylor, a 26-year-old Black EMT, to death in her own apartment. The officers, who used a battering ram to enter Taylor’s home, had a “no-knock” warrant because they believed a suspect in a drug ring ― who did not live there ― was having packages delivered to Taylor’s home. The individual allegedly involved in the ring had actually been arrested...
