Protesters march against police brutality in Los Angeles, following a decision on the Breonna Taylor case.APU GOMES / AFP
Breonna Taylor was about to turn that corner in life that changes everything.
This damn 2020 was going to be her year.
She wrote it herself on her Twitter account after saving enough money to buy a shiny black Dodge Charger that roared with excitement, just like her, when she stepped on the gas.
His two-bedroom apartment, which he shared with his sister, full of
post-its
of colors or notes written on any piece of paper that was within reach (a napkin; an invoice): with the urgent, the important and the dreams to be realized.
"Buy a house".
Perhaps having a baby with the man who saw her die while dying without help after being the target of bullets fired frantically by one of the three police officers from the city of Louisville (Kentucky) who called at dawn on March 13 at your door.
That morning, several drug raids were carried out in one of the most impoverished areas of the city: Elliott Avenue.
The objective?
Arrest and seize the narcotics in the possession of 30-year-old Jamarcus Glover, many of them in prison.
He was also a boyfriend of those back and forth for more than four years of young Taylor.
The police had Glover on their radar.
But also Taylor, since she paid his bail to get him out of jail every time he was arrested;
because he used her car to go to the houses where drugs were sold;
because she was photographed in front of one of those houses on more than one occasion;
because she gave the address of Taylor's apartment as her place of residence.
Born 26 years ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the daughter of a 16-year-old single mother and a father who has been incarcerated since she was six years old, Breonna Taylor also had her life tied to Kenneth Walker for seven years.
In mid-February, Taylor definitely broke up with Glover and got engaged to Walker.
She was about to turn the corner.
Aspiring nurse, Breonna Taylor worked as an assistant in the Louisville hospital emergency room.
What was her last night alive should have been the first night she slept after four mornings covering the night shift at the medical center.
That night was going to be a good night.
Dinner out and movie in bed.
She and Walker alone in the apartment.
Her sister on a trip to California.
More than 60 police officers, including a tactical special forces team and several ambulances - for whatever reason - were on the perimeter of the police operation that was to begin in various locations in the South End of Louisville.
In front of Breonna Taylor's apartment number 4, due to her relationship with the convict Glover, only a small group of agents with the last instruction to "call and identify themselves" before entering the assault.
The woman was supposed to be alone.
What the police saw from their surveillance position was the dim blue light emitted from the small screen.
The last coherent words that Walker remembers from his fiancée, surrendered by sleep, were: "Turn off the television."
"Who's there?"
At 12:35 am on March 13, Taylor's life began a tragic countdown.
There is only one witness from the apartment complex who claims he heard the police identify themselves.
What Taylor and her partner went through, according to Warren's account, were continuous knocking on the door and no answer to the question of "who is there?"
In the words of Sam Aguiar, a lawyer representing Breonna's family, the police intervention was full of "catastrophic failures."
"Breonna Taylor was shot in her own home, with her boyfriend doing something that is as American as apple pie: defending himself and his wife."
Because that's what happened.
Believing that a criminal was trying to break into his property - or that even a spiteful Glover was seeking revenge for Breonna's lost love - Walker used his Glock 9 and pulled the trigger when he saw the door collapse, firing a shot and wounding the man. Sergeant Mattingly.
From that moment, the agents began to open fire.
Mattingly first;
then Detective Cosgrove;
and breaking the entry tactic, Detective Hankison walked around the house and began firing indiscriminately through the curtained living room glass.
He fired blindly, reaching the floor above Taylor's, where a pregnant woman slept with her five-year-old son.
Breonna Taylor fit six bullets into her body, one of which killed her.
The agents practiced outside a tourniquet to the injured partner, oblivious to Taylor and Warren.
At 12:47 in the morning, Breonna's boyfriend called 911.
The ambulance to Taylor's rescue was slow to arrive, tried to enter through an alley closed to cars.
Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.
The corner had just disappeared to turn in what would no longer be Taylor's year.
Unlike the case of George Floyd, who died of suffocation under the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis in May, Taylor's case has no recording, no strong images that close a case with a culprit and a conviction. Hankinson was fired from the police department for excessive use of force. This past Wednesday a Grand Jury applied the same charge to him. The other two agents: blameless. Icon and symbol of police violence and racial injustice, the streets of major cities in the United States demanded justice for Breonna Taylor. "Say your name," demanded the banners. In the Louisville riots, two police officers were shot. The suspect is in custody. The curfew is still imposed in Louisville. In every corner of the city center, the forces of order deployed.
