The sole police officer charged in the deadly raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment was acquitted Thursday.
Brett Hankison, 45, had been charged with wanton endangerment because bullets he fired flew into a neighboring apartment.
Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, the two officers who combined to shoot Taylor six times, were never charged with crimes. No one was charged with killing Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman.
Prosecutors said Hankison’s 10 shots, fired from outside the apartment, endangered a family of three that lived in the apartment next to Taylor’s.
Hankison’s defense team said the former officer opened fire to defend his colleagues. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot after he said he mistook the police officers for intruders. That shot hit Cosgrove in the leg; the three officers responded by opening fire. Three other officers who were part of the raid team never fired a shot.
It took the jury about three hours before they voted to acquit Hankison.
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