The Louisville Metro Police Department fired two officers involved in the botched raid that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death and, in part, launched a summer of protests, authorities said.
Dets. Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove learned last week that the department intended to fire them, and those terminations became official on Tuesday, according to the Louisville Metro Police Department.
Taylor, who had no criminal record, was asleep with boyfriend Kenneth Walker when plainclothes officers entered her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13 to serve a no-knock search warrant in a drug case.
Walker, who had a license to carry a weapon, called 911 believing the home was being invaded by criminals and opened fire, wounding one of the officers in the leg.
That’s when police returned fire and killed Taylor, who was unarmed. Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said in September.
Jaynes was not at Taylor’s apartment when gunfire erupted, but hours earlier he secured the search warrant that led to the deadly confrontation.
The deaths of Taylor in Louisville and of George Floyd while he was in Minneapolis police custody, and the initial decisions not to charge the individuals involved in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia, fueled a summer of international protests against systemic racism.
Despite the outcry against Taylor’s shooting, no criminal charges were sought in her death.
Instead, former Louisville police Det. Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, was charged for allegedly firing blindly into an apartment and recklessly endangering Taylor’s neighbors.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
