Former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison testified Monday to a federal jury that he felt the percussion from a gunshot fired at officers before they opened fire, killing Breonna Taylor in her hallway.
Hankison was testifying at his retrial on civil rights charges that accuse him of endangering Taylor and her next-door neighbors when he fired into her sliding door and a window during a botched drug raid in 2020. His shots didn’t hit anyone but flew into a neighbor's apartment.
“I felt that blast coming in our direction. I feel the percussion of the blast,” Hankison said, sometimes getting emotional when he talked about a fellow officer being shot during the raid. He said that after officers knocked down the door, he looked inside and saw a person in a “rifle stance” facing the officers.
Hankison then moved away from the doorway and swung around to the side of the unit, he said. At that point, two other officers were shooting into the doorway, prompting Hankison to believe there was a back-and-forth gun battle, he testified.
“In my mind, an AR-15 is being shot and it sounds like it’s getting closer and louder,” Hankison said, adding that it “sounded like a semiautomatic rifle making its way down the hallway and executing everybody in my (group).”
Taylor's boyfriend had fired a single shot after officers breached the door with a battering ram. Police returned 32 shots, including 10 from Hankison, in a matter of seconds. Taylor was hit and died in her hallway, just seconds after being roused from bed around midnight.
Hankison is the only officer who has faced a jury trial so far in Taylor’s death, which sparked months of street protests for the fatal shooting of the 26-year-old Black woman by white officers, drawing national attention to police brutality in the summer of 2020.
Hankison has said in testimony through two trials and this retrial that he was taking action to protect officers by firing into Taylor’s apartment after former Sgt. John Mattingly was hit in the leg.
Hankison’s testimony has proven powerful — after he testified in his 2022 wanton endangerment trial, he was acquitted after the jury deliberated for three hours. Last year, following his testimony, a jury deliberated for three days before deadlocking, saying they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on Hankison's guilt.
Prosecutors will cross-examine Hankison on Tuesday at the trial in U.S. District Court, which is in its third week.
Hankison said the night of the raid was the first time he had fired his gun in nearly 20 years of policing.
Several witnesses, including Louisville’s police chief, have testified during the trial that Hankison violated Louisville police policy that requires officers to identify a target before firing.
Hankison said he saw bright bursts of light through the curtains on the glass door and window, making him believe the shooter inside was continuing to fire at officers.
“I saw those windows and doors lighting up,” he said. “It looked like there was a strobe light in there.”
Mattingly, called by Hankison's attorneys Monday, testified that he saw a person holding a gun at the end of the hallway before he was shot.
Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, later told police he thought an intruder was breaking in.
Mattingly, who retired from the department in 2021, said he was initially confused when he learned that Hankison fired into the side of the apartment, but he spoke with Hankison about two months after the shooting to hear his explanation.
“I would do the same thing,” Mattingly said Monday of Hankison's actions.
Hankison was one of four officers who were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. The two counts against him carry a maximum penalty of life in prison if he is convicted. The three other former officers charged were involved in crafting the search warrant.
The federal charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice so far have yielded just one conviction — a plea deal from a former Louisville officer who was not at the raid and became a cooperating witness — while felony civil rights charges against two officers accused of falsifying information in the warrant for the raid were thrown out by a judge last month.
