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 court order that resulted in Taylor’s death, alleging that his constitutional rights were raped during the raid.
CNN obtained a copy of Walker’s lawsuit and reported that his attorneys allege that agents violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they executed a search warrant last March.
They also allege that the warrant itself was based on fabricated claims, that the break-in was carried out unnecessarily at night, that the officers did not announce that they were police officers, and that the officers responded with excessive force.
The suit further accuses officers of failing to coordinate with the Louisville Metropolitan Police SWAT team, which reportedly generally handles search warrants without hitting. He criticizes the LMPD for allowing officers to execute search warrants at night, claiming that the execution of nightly search warrants “predictably leads to dangerous situations in which the objectives of the searches mistake the police for trespassers.”
“We seek to ensure that there is justice and accountability for the tragic and unjustified police assault on Kenneth Walker and the murder of Breonna Taylor at her home in the middle of the night,” said the Georgetown University Law Center professor, Cliff Sloan, one of the attorneys representing Walker, told CNN in a statement.
Police executed a search warrant on March 13, 2020 at the apartment that Walker and Taylor shared while the couple slept. Walker, thinking the officers were trespassers, fired a shot at the front door and knocked Sergeant. Jonathan Mattingly on the leg. The return shot 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, which prevented him from being charged in 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 misdemeanor counts of senseless endangering by multiple bullets that penetrated a wall and entered a neighboring apartment.
Anonymous grand jury members later said that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) never recommended murder charges and that the jury was never allowed to consider such charges against the officers.