Breonna Taylor

Breonna Taylor was twenty-six years old in the spring of twenty twenty. She was an emergency medical technician working at two Louisville hospitals. She was sleeping in her apartment at three thousand three Springfield Drive in the early morning hours of March thirteenth when Louisville Metro Police officers executed a no-knock search warrant at her home.

Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, heard the door break open and, not knowing who was entering, fired one shot. Officers returned fire, discharging about thirty two rounds into the apartment. Taylor was struck by six bullets. She died at the scene.

No drugs were found in the apartment. The warrant had named Taylor's address in connection with a drug investigation; she was not the primary target. A man named Jamarcus Glover, her former boyfriend, was the subject of the investigation, and he had already been arrested elsewhere that night.

The legal proceedings unfolded over the following two years. A state grand jury charged one officer, Brett Hankison, with wanton endangerment, for bullets that had passed through Taylor's walls and into neighboring apartments. He was acquitted. No officer was charged with Taylor's death. In September of twenty twenty, the city of Louisville agreed to pay twelve million dollars to Taylor's family, one of the largest settlements in a police accountability case in Kentucky history.

In June of twenty twenty, Louisville Metro Council passed Breonna's Law, banning no-knock warrants. The protests that followed Taylor's death, which lasted more than a hundred and fifty days in Louisville, drew hundreds of thousands of people. They were part of the broader national reckoning that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Federal civil rights charges were later brought against four current and former officers involved in the raid. The case was still working through the federal courts as of the time of this recording. Taylor is buried in Louisville.