Breonna Taylor’s neighbor recalled her horror as police bullets flew into her residence close to her sleeping son because the federal trial of the previous Louisville officer who fired these photographs started Thursday.
Former Louisville Police Officer Brett Hankison fired 10 photographs throughout the botched raid in March 2020 that killed Taylor, although it was one other officer who fatally shot the 26-year-old Black girl. Hankison, 47, was charged with two federal civil rights violations for endangering Taylor, her boyfriend and Taylor’s neighbors, who shared a wall together with her residence. None of Hankison’s photographs hit anybody.
Federal prosecutors try to do what Kentucky prosecutors have been unable to do — convict Hankison for his actions on the night time Taylor was shot and killed by white officers. On the 2022 state trial, Hankison was acquitted of endangerment expenses in opposition to Chelsea Napper and her household.
On this federal case, the stakes are greater for Hankison. Each expenses carry a most penalty of life imprisonment.
“I used to be scared to loss of life, I did not know what was taking place,” the neighbor, Napper, testified as the primary witness referred to as by federal prosecutors. Napper lived subsequent door to Taylor, whose killing sparked widespread protests over racial injustice in the summertime of 2020.
“I did not know what to suppose, I could not suppose,” Napper testified, after she stated she heard a loud bang outdoors. It was a hail of gunfire from the officers who got here to Taylor’s door to serve an arrest warrant. After officers smashed Taylor’s door with a battering ram, her boyfriend fired a shot that struck an officer within the leg.
Naber’s good friend and her son had been additionally of their residence, and he or she stated a bullet got here inside a foot or two of her son, Zayden, as he lay in mattress. Napper testified that she was shocked when she later realized {that a} police officer had fired the photographs.
Hankison’s attorneys argued throughout opening arguments that the previous Ok-9 officer with 17 years of expertise was making a “tactical transfer” when he walked away from Taylor’s entrance door, ran to the aspect of the residence and fired photographs via a glass door and bed room. Window.
“None of Brett Hankison’s photographs hit anybody. No person,” his lawyer Jack Byrd stated throughout opening arguments Thursday.
Federal prosecutors informed the jury that Hankison fired his photographs after the capturing between different officers and Taylor’s boyfriend stopped.
“At that time, Breonna was on the bottom…the capturing stopped,” stated Anna Gottfried, a federal prosecutor for the Division of Justice. “However the defendant was not completed.”
Hankison backed as much as the aspect of the residence and “all of the sudden shot into the residence,” Gottfried stated.
Hankison’s attorneys disputed that there was a pause between the gunfire between the officers on the door and Hankison’s photographs. Not one of the officers concerned within the raid turned on their physique cameras.
Byrd argued that Hankison had stayed up the night time of the raid to earn extra time pay, and had nothing to do with drafting the arrest warrant used to enter Taylor’s house. He stated the jury will hear testimony that Hankison was not the final to fireplace his weapon.
Hankison took the witness stand at his 2022 trial in state court docket and stated that after a fellow officer was shot within the leg, he moved away from the entrance door and to the aspect of the residence the place the capturing started. He stated he wished to “cease the menace” coming from contained in the residence.
Jury choice started Monday. About 80 potential jurors had been questioned individually away from the general public eye in a library adjoining to the courthouse over three days, with U.S. District Choose Rebecca Jenning Grady taking precautions to guard their identities and solutions to non-public questions. At Hankison’s state trial, potential jurors had been requested about their opinions about police and protest teams like Black Lives Matter.
On Thursday morning, 16 jurors had been chosen, which incorporates 4 alternates in case a juror is unable to complete the trial.
Hankison is certainly one of 4 officers charged by the US Division of Justice final 12 months with violating Taylor’s civil rights. He was fired by Louisville police in 2020.
