Breonna Taylor: One police officer charged with 'wanton endangerment' and two cleared in shooting

An officer fired from Louisville’s police department has been charged with three counts of wanton endangerment six months after the killing of Breonna Taylor.

Brett Hankison could face up to five years in prison in each count after a grand jury indictment was announced on Wednesday. 

The indictments targeted officer Hankinson’s shots, fired from outside the apartment, but not the fatal shots that killed Ms Taylor.

Mr Hankinson was fired three months after her death for "wantonly and blindly" firing 10 rounds into the building, according to then-interim Louisville Police Chief Robert Schroeder.

Two other officers who may have fired the shots that killed Ms Taylor have not been charged.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has claimed that “evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced” before entering her apartment.

“The warrant was not served as a no-knock warrant,” he said.

Ms Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician, was at home in bed with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker on 13 March when officers used a ram to break the door to her apartment shortly after midnight.

All officers fired their weapons, the attorney general revealed, but officers Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove were “justified in their return of deadly fire" because Mr Walker had fired first, he said.

That justification “bars” the office from pursuing criminal charges against them, he said.

Ms Taylor’s killing has sparked a global call to “arrest the cops” involved, galvanising a movement condemning police brutality and demanding justice in the wake of police killings of black Americans, with support from high-profile celebrities, athletes and officials across the US.

The city has anxiously waited for a decision as to whether prosecutors would charge Hankison, Mattingly and Cosgrove for their role in her killing.

Mr Walker, who believed someone was breaking into the apartment, fired a gun, striking officer Mattingly’s leg. Police returned fire, striking Ms Taylor six times.

Attorney General Cameron said officer Hankinson fired his weapon 10 times from outside the apartment.

Police believed suspects in a drug case had used her apartment’s address to receive packages, though the suspects they were investigating were miles away from her home. The warrant was one of several involved with case – a suspect was arrested more than 10 miles from Ms Taylor’s apartment the same night she was killed. 

None of the officers wore body-mounted cameras that night.

Her family has demanded that the officers be charged with murder.

Louisville has agreed to pay $12m to Ms Taylor’s estate and commit to police reform and transparency measures to settle a civil lawsuit filed in the wake of her death.

The Kentucky National Guard and other law enforcement agencies have been activated in Louisville ahead of the announcement. Louisville mayor Greg Fischer also issued a state of emergency, as ongoing protests demand justice and condemn the apparent absolution of charges against officers who fired the fatal shots.

Attorney General Cameron performed its final interview on Friday and presented the case to a grand jury on Monday.