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26-Year Old EMT Shot 8 Times By Louisville Police

Breonna Taylor, who was work­ing as an EMT in Kentucky when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic start­ed, was report­ed­ly killed after being shot 8 times by police who mis­tak­en­ly entered her apart­ment. Her fam­i­ly is fil­ing a law­suit accus­ing the offi­cers of wrong­ful death, exces­sive force, and gross negligence.

Back in March, Taylor, who was only 26-years old, was shot and killed by Louisville Metro Police offi­cers while serv­ing a drug war­rant at her apart­ment, but noth­ing ille­gal was found there. It was even­tu­al­ly found out that the police went to the wrong home and the real sus­pect was actu­al­ly already in cus­tody before the raid. Taylor’s fam­i­ly is suing the LMPD offi­cers, say­ing they “blind­ly fired” into the home, fir­ing shots into Taylor’s house and neigh­bor­ing apart­ments “with a total dis­re­gard for the val­ue of human life,” accord­ing to the lawsuit.

Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was at the apart­ment thought they were being robbed so he fired at the offi­cers who force­ful­ly entered. He was arrest­ed and charged with the attempt­ed mur­der of a police offi­cer. Sgt. John Mattingly, who was shot in the leg dur­ing the inci­dent, detec­tives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison were placed on admin­is­tra­tive reas­sign­ment in con­nec­tion to the inci­dent. More than that, Taylor’s fam­i­ly is seek­ing jus­tice. The law­suit her fam­i­ly filed demands a tri­al by jury. “Not one per­son has talked to me. Not one per­son has explained any­thing to me,” Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s moth­er, told The Courier Journal. “I want jus­tice for her. I want them to say her name. There’s no rea­son Breonna should be dead at all.”

National civ­il rights attor­ney Ben Crump is join­ing local attor­neys Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker in the legal team to help Taylor’s fam­i­ly find answers. Crump has rep­re­sent­ed in sev­er­al big cas­es includ­ing the recent shoot­ing of Ahmaud Arbery. Meanwhile, the LMPD has not made a com­ment regard­ing the inci­dent, stat­ing “the Public Integrity inves­ti­ga­tion into this case remains ongo­ing, there­fore it would be inap­pro­pri­ate for us to com­ment beyond what we already have said imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the incident.”