Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend sues Louisville police over fatal raid

Kenneth Walker, who was Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) and the officers involved in the execution of the no-knock warrant that resulted in Taylor’s death, alleging his constitutional rights were violated during the raid.

CNN obtained a copy of Walker’s lawsuit and reported that his attorneys allege officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they executed a search warrant last March.

They also allege that the warrant itself was based on fabricated assertions, that the raid was unnecessarily conducted at night, that the officers did not announce they were police and that the officers responded with excessive force.

The suit further accuses the officers of failing to coordinate with the Louisville Metro Police SWAT team, which reportedly typically handles no-knock search warrants. It criticizes the LMPD for regularly allowing officers to carry out search warrants at night, alleging that the execution of late-night search warrants “predictably leads to dangerous situations in which the targets of searches mistake police for intruders.”

“We are seeking to ensure that there is justice and accountability for the tragic and unjustified police assault on Kenneth Walker and killing of Breonna Taylor in her home in the middle of the night,” Georgetown University Law Center professor Cliff Sloan, who is one of the lawyers representing Walker, told CNN in a statement.

Police executed a search warrant on March 13, 2020, on the apartment Walker and Taylor shared while the couple was sleeping. Walker, thinking the officers were intruders, fired one shot at the front door and struck Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. The returning gunfire from the police officers killed Taylor.

Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer. The charges were dismissed with prejudice last week, preventing him from being charged with the incident.

In September, officials announced that none of the officers involved in the raid — Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Mattingly  — would be charged in Taylor’s death. Hankinson was charged with three lesser counts of wanton endangerment for multiple bullets that penetrated a wall and entered a neighboring apartment.

Anonymous grand jurors later said that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) never recommended murder charges and that the jury was never permitted to consider such charges against the officers.