Four US police officers charged over killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020
FILE - This undated photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar shows Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Picture: AP
Four current and former police officers in the US have been arrested and charged over the fatal shooting of of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky in 2020.
Federal prosecutors said that Louisville police officers, Joshua Jaynes, Brett Hankison and Kelly Goodlett, along with Sergeant Kyle Meany, knowingly used false information to obtain the search warrant that authorized the search of Taylor's home that led to her shooting.
The charges was announced by US attorney-general Merrick Garland this afternoon.
Mr Garland said federal officials “share but cannot fully imagine the grief” felt by Ms Taylor’s family.
Ms Taylor was shot in her home in Louisville on March 13, 2020, by officers carrying out a search warrant.
Her boyfriend fired a shot that hit one of the officers as they came through the door and they returned fire, striking her multiple times.
Hankison, who was dismissed from the department in 2020, was one of the officers at Ms Taylor’s door and one of three who fired shots that night.
He was acquitted by a jury of state charges of wanton endangerment earlier this year in Louisville.
Jaynes applied for the warrant to search Ms Taylor’s house. He was fired in January 2021 by former Louisville Police interim chief Yvette Gentry for violating department standards in the preparation of a search warrant execution and for being “untruthful” in the Taylor warrant.
The killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was unarmed at the time, was one of a number of cases that prompted large-scale protests in the US against police violence and racial injustice.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
