Kenneth Walker, who was Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, filed a federal lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) and the agents involved in the execution of the no-knock warrant that resulted in Taylor’s death because he claimed that his constitutional rights had been violated in the raid.
CNN received a copy of Walker’s lawsuit and reported that its attorneys allege agents violated his rights to the Fourth Amendment when they executed a search warrant last March.
They also allege that the warrant itself was based on fabricated claims, that the raid took place unnecessarily at night, that the officers did not announce they were police, and that the officers responded with excessive force.
The indictment further accuses the agents of failing to coordinate with the Louisville Metro Police SWAT team, which reportedly handles search warrants typically. It criticizes the LMPD for regularly allowing officers to carry out nighttime search warrants, alleging that the execution of nighttime search warrants “predictably leads to dangerous situations where the targets of the searches mistake the police for intruders.”
“We try to ensure that there is justice and accountability for the tragic and unwarranted police attack on Kenneth Walker and the murder of Breonna Taylor in her home in the middle of the night,” said Professor Cliff Sloan of Georgetown University Law Center, a of the attorneys representing Walker told CNN in a statement.
Police executed a search warrant on March 13, 2020 in the apartment Walker and Taylor shared while the couple slept. Walker, who thought the agents were intruders, fired one shot at the front door and struck Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg. The police officers’ recurring gunfire killed Taylor.
Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer. The charges were rejected with prejudice last week, so he was not charged with the incident.
In September, officials announced that none of the agents involved in the raid – Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Mattingly – would be charged with Taylor’s death. Hankinson was charged with three lesser counts of willful danger from multiple bullets that penetrated a wall and entered a neighboring apartment.
Anonymous major jurors later said that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) never recommended assassination attempts and that the jury was never allowed to consider such charges against the officers.