Kent. EMT Shot Dead in Home by Police in Apparently Botched Raid

New York Daily News

Relatives of the Kentucky EMT who was shot and killed during a “botched” police raid at her home has hired the civil rights lawyer now working with Ahmaud Arbery’s family, the lawyer said.

Attorney Ben Crump confirmed Tuesday he was retained by the family of Breonna Taylor, 26, and will pursue key evidence—including a 911 recording—to determine how she ended up shot “at least eight times” in her own home on March 13.

“We want answers why this innocent woman was executed while police were serving a warrant even though they had their suspect already in custody,” Crump told the Daily News Tuesday.

“This was a botched execution of a search warrant, and a completely innocent EMT who was risking her life during coronavirus was shot with at least eight bullets. Her family thinks it could have been 12 bullets,” he said.

He said Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were asleep in their apartment when Louisville Police burst into their home without warning.

He said the couple was terrified and called 911 to report a possible home invasion burglary by unknown intruders. The lawyer said the couple’s building had “paper-thin walls,” and four neighbors already have signed affidavits saying that they didn’t hear police identify themselves.

Crump said Walker was a licensed gun owner who pulled out a permitted weapon and fired at some point during the chaos.

“He goes to defend themselves and shoots because people were coming through the door at 1 o’clock in the morning," he said. “The police shot 20 to 30 times from all directions. It’s so wrong how Breonna died because the police didn’t follow their own policies and procedures. It was reckless and careless.”

Crump said Louisville Metropolitan Police have shared almost no information with Taylor’s mother and initially told her to look for her daughter at a local hospital, even though she died at the scene.

“We’re asking that they release the 911 call and release the warrant,” Crump said Tuesday. “This family wants to know the honest truth, how police could execute an innocent, beautiful young lady whose mother says was one of the brightest lights in the world. She loved helping people."

Crump said it appears Taylor’s residence was targeted because she “knew the suspect three years ago.”

He said the entire tragedy could have been prevented if the officers had communicated with their colleagues and learned the suspect in the drug case had been taken into custody at his own residence, at a different location, hours earlier.

In a wrongful death lawsuit filed last month, Taylor’s family said the officers entered the licensed EMT’s home without knocking and caught the sleeping couple completely off guard.

The officers then “proceeded to spray gunfire into the residence with a total disregard for the value of human life,” the lawsuit obtained and posted online by WLKY states.

“Shots were blindly fired by the officers all throughout Breonna’s home,” the filing claims. “Breonna had posed no threat to the officers and did nothing to deserve to die at their hands.”

Taylor worked for two local hospitals and her boyfriend was set to begin a new job with the postal service, the paperwork says. Neither had any criminal history for drugs or violence, it states.

Once the gunfire ended, Walker was arrested and charged with attempting to murder one of the police officers serving the warrant.

LMPD Sgt. John Mattingly was struck in the leg during the incident, WLKY reported.

He and detectives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison were placed on administrative reassignment, the station said.

Crump, meanwhile, has gained national prominence for his involvement in the controversial shooting deaths of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland.

Crump, who’s based in Florida, is also representing the family of Ahmuad Arbery, the 25-year-old black man who was shot and killed by two white men in Georgia while jogging.

The shooting, which took place in February, generated national attention and outrage after a video of the incident surfaced online last week.