Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American medical worker, was killed on March 13, 2020, after police officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) forcibly entered her home. Mistaking the police for intruders, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot, striking officer Jonathan Mattingly. Mattingly and two other LMPD officers—Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove—opened fire. It was determined that Cosgrove fired the fatal shot to Taylor and that none of Hankison's shots hit anyone. Taylor's family was awarded $12 million in compensation and was given a promise the LMPD would reform its practices.
The killing of Taylor by police officers, and the initial lack of charges against the LMPD officers involved, sparked numerous protests with supporters adopting the motto #SayHerName. These protests against police brutality and racism were concurrent with the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement across the United States. The civil unrest was exacerbated when the grand jury chose not to indict Mattingly or Cosgrove—the officers who shot Taylor. Prosecutors said their use of force was justified as Walker fired first. Some jurors accused Attorney General Daniel Cameron of covering up what happened.
On August 23, 2022, Officer Kelly Goodlett, who was not present during the raid, pled guilty to charges related to obtaining the warrant used. As of August 2026, her sentencing has been repeatedly delayed.
On November 1, 2024, a federal jury found Brett Hankison guilty of depriving Taylor of her civil rights for using excessive force. On July 21, 2025, he was sentenced to 2+3⁄4 years in prison, as well as three years of supervised release. As of March 2026, Hankison is currently at home while he appeals his conviction.
Overview
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment when at least seven police officers forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations. Three Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers—Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove—were involved in the shooting. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside the apartment with her when the plainclothes officers knocked on the door and then forced entry.
The officers said they announced themselves as police before forcing entry, but Walker said he did not hear any announcement and thought the officers were intruders. Walker fired his gun in the direction of the officers, in what he said was a warning shot. The shot hit Mattingly in the leg, and the officers fired 32 shots in return. Walker was unhurt, but Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. During the incident, Hankison moved to the side of the apartment and shot 10 bullets through a covered window and glass door. According to police, Taylor's home was never searched.
Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer, but the charges were dismissed with prejudice a year later. In June 2020, the LMPD fired Hankison for blindly firing through the covered patio door and window of Taylor's apartment. In September, the city of Louisville agreed to pay Taylor's family $12 million and reform police practices. Cosgrove was determined to have fired the fatal shot that killed Taylor, and in 2021, the LMPD fired him.
Further in September, a state grand jury indicted Hankison on three counts of felony first-degree wanton endangerment for endangering Taylor's neighbors with his shots. In October, recordings from the grand jury investigation into the shooting were released. Two of the jurors released a statement saying that the grand jury was not presented with homicide charges against the officers. Several jurors have also accused Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron and the police of covering up what happened. On March 3, 2022, Hankison was acquitted of the endangerment charges by a jury in Kentucky v. Hankison.
On August 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the Department of Justice was charging Hankison with the unconstitutional use of excessive force that violated Taylor's civil rights. Hankison's federal trial began in October 2023, and concluded as a mistrial in November 2023; a retrial took place in October 2024. On November 1, 2024, Hankison was found guilty of violating Taylor's civil rights through his use of excessive force.
Three other officers—Kyle Meany, Joshua Jaynes, and Kelly Goodlett—who were not present at the shooting, were federally charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and civil rights violations for conspiring to mislead the judge who approved the search warrant on Walker's house, then covering it up. Goodlett pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy. Meany and Jaynes pled not guilty to all charges.
On August 22, 2024, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson dismissed two felony deprivation of rights under the color of law charges against Jaynes and Meany—effectively reducing the civil rights violation charges against them to misdemeanors. Judge Simpson found that Walker's actions had ultimately "disrupted" the officers' execution of the search warrant and led to the police shooting back; thus his actions had resulted in Taylor's death, not the warrant itself. Judge Simpson refused to dismiss the remaining charges: a charge of issuing a false statement to federal investigators against Meany, and charges of conspiracy to falsify records, falsifying records in a federal investigation, and witness tampering against Jaynes.
People involved
- Breonna Taylor worked for University of Louisville Health as a full-time emergency room technician and was a former emergency medical technician. Her funeral was on March 21, 2020.
- Kenneth Walker was Taylor's boyfriend, who was present with her in the apartment and fired the shot at what he said he thought were intruders.
- Jonathan Mattingly (now retired) was an LMPD police officer who joined the department in 2000, became a sergeant in 2009, and joined the narcotics division in 2016.
- Brett Hankison is a former LMPD detective. He joined the department in 2003 after being part of the Lexington Police Department from 1999 until 2002. The LMPD fired him on June 23, 2020.
- Myles Cosgrove is an LMPD police officer who was transferred to the department's narcotics division in 2016.
- Kelly Goodlett is a former detective with the LMPD who was involved in writing the search warrant for Taylor's home. Goodlett later pleaded guilty to lying on the warrant and writing a false report to cover it up.
- Mary Shaw is the Jefferson County Circuit Court judge who authorized the warrant. In 2022, she lost her reelection bid and announced her retirement.
- Joshua Jaynes is a former detective with the LMPD.
- Kyle Meany is a sergeant with the LMPD.
Background
The LMPD investigation's primary targets were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker (not related to Kenneth Walker), who were suspected of selling controlled substances from a drug house approximately 10 miles (16 km) away. Glover said the police had pressured him to move out of his residence for unspecified reasons. Glover and Taylor had been in an on-off relationship that started in 2016 and lasted until February 2020, when Taylor committed to Kenneth Walker.
In December 2016, a man named Fernandez Bowman was found dead in the front seat of a car rented by Taylor and used by Glover. He had been shot eight times. An unrelated party was later arrested for Bowman's death. Glover had used Taylor's address and phone number for various purposes, including bank statements.
Jamarcus Glover's statements
In a variety of statements, Glover said that Taylor had no involvement in the drug operations, that as a favor she held money from the proceeds for him, and that she handled money for him for other purposes. In different recorded jailhouse conversations, Glover said that Taylor had been handling his money and that she was holding $8,000 of it, that he had given Taylor money to pay phone bills, and that he had told his sister that another woman had been keeping the group's money.
In the recorded conversations and in an interview with the Courier Journal of Louisville, Glover repeatedly said that Taylor was not involved in any drug operations and that police had "no business" looking for him at her residence, and denied that he had said in the recorded conversations that he kept money at her residence. Taylor was never a co-defendant in Glover's case.
Incident
Warrant
LMPD obtained a "no-knock" search warrant for Taylor's apartment at 3003 Springfield Drive in Louisville. The search warrant included Taylor's residence because it was suspected that Glover received packages containing drugs there, might have been "keeping narcotics and/or proceeds from the sale of narcotics" there, and because a car registered to Taylor had been seen parked in front of Glover's house several times. Specifically, the warrant alleges that in January 2020, Glover left Taylor's apartment with an unknown package, presumed to contain drugs, and took it to a known drug apartment soon afterward. The warrant states that this event was verified "through a U.S. Postal Inspector". In May 2020, the U.S. postal inspector in Louisville publicly announced that the purported collaboration with law enforcement had never occurred. The postal office said it was asked by a different agency to monitor packages going to Taylor's apartment, but after doing so, it concluded, "There's [sic] no packages of interest going there."
This public revelation put the investigation and especially the warrant into question; it resulted in an internal investigation by the police department.
The warrant was sought by LMPD detective Joshua C. Jaynes and was among a total of five warrants approved the preceding day by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mary Shaw "within 12 minutes". It was stamped as filed with the court clerk's office on April 2. All five warrants contain similar language to justify no-knock entry that concludes with "due to the nature of how these drug traffickers operate". Christopher Slobogin, director of Vanderbilt University's Criminal Justice Program, said that unless police had a reason to suspect that Taylor's residence had surveillance cameras, "a no-knock warrant would be improper." Brian Gallini, a professor at the University of Arkansas, also expressed skepticism about the warrant, writing that if it was appropriate in this particular search, "then every routine drug transaction would justify grounds for no-knock".
In September 2022, WHAS11 news reported that as part of Goodlett's plea deal, she stated that Jaynes sought the warrants from Shaw "because he believed she would not closely scrutinize the warrants".
Jaynes attested in the affidavit that:
Affiant verified through a US Postal Inspector that Jamarcus Glover has been receiving packages at 3003 Springfield Drive #4. Affiant knows through training and experience that it is not uncommon for drug traffickers to receive mail packages at different locations to avoid detection from law enforcement. Affiant believes through training and experience, that Mr. J. Glover may be keeping narcotics and/or proceeds from the sale of narcotics at 3003 Springfield Drive #4 for safe keeping.
But Sergeant Timothy Salyer, supervisor of the Shively, Kentucky, police department's Special Investigations Unit, told LMPD internal investigators in May that due to "bad blood" between the United States Postal Inspection Service and the LMPD, inquiries related to the drug trafficking investigation had been routed through the Shively Police Department. In his interview with internal investigators, Jaynes said that before the raid on Taylor's apartment, Mattingly told him that the Shively Police Department had reported that the United States Postal Service had not delivered any suspicious packages to that address. Jaynes was reassigned from his duties with the LMPD in June.
According to The New York Times, before the execution of the no-knock warrant, orders were changed to "knock and announce".
Police entry into the apartment
Shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020, Louisville police dressed in plain clothes knocked on Taylor's door before forcing entry using a battering ram. There is dispute as to whether the officers announced themselves before forcing entry. Walker contends that Taylor asked, "Who is it?" several times after hearing a loud bang at the door. Hearing no answer, Walker decided to call his mother instead of the police. After calling his mother, he dialed 911 and armed himself. The police officers involved have testified that they announced themselves multiple times before using the battering ram to enter the apartment.
The New York Times interviewed roughly a dozen neighbors and reported that only one of them, who was on the exterior staircase immediately above Taylor's apartment, heard the officers shout "Police!" once and knock at least three times. The other interviewed neighbors heard no announcement including one who was outside smoking a cigarette.
According to a statement by Attorney General Cameron, an independent investigation concluded that the no-knock warrant was served as a knock-and-announce warrant, which was corroborated by one independent witness who was near Taylor's apartment. But on September 30, this witness's lawyer said that police announced themselves "only in passing" and implied that the witness was quoted out of context or that video was deceptively spliced. According to VICE News, the witness originally said "nobody identified themselves" when he was interviewed by police a week after the shooting. But when the police called him two months later, he said he heard, "This is the cops."