By Bruce Schreiner, Rebecca Rreynolds Yonker and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn - AP News
Louisville police authorities have revealed new details about the case of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old black paramedic who was shot at her home in March during a police raid, with
new documents. raising questions about why authorities broke into Taylor's home.
That event, based on a search warrant that was not directed against Taylor herself, resulted in the death of the young woman after a barrage of police shots.
Police files released Wednesday reveal that Taylor had contact in the past with a man who was suspected of drug trafficking, as the young woman had previously dated him.
Although she had broken up, the fact that it had existed months earlier prompted police to identify Taylor's home as an alleged place of interest for a search.
But the same newly released documents indicate
police were unsure that Taylor was still in contact with the
suspected
man
, Jamarcus Glover, to justify breaking into the woman's home.
"I no longer have anything to do with Bre," Glover himself said in an audio taken on March 13, the day of the raid, recently released documents reveal.
[Criticism rains down on Kentucky's first black prosecutor after the Breonna Taylor ruling]
Lt. Dale Massey, a member of the Louisville SWAT (elite police unit) team who arrived on the scene, described the
manner in which the search warrant was carried out as a "heinous act."
Massey told investigators that he and other members of the unit felt "something really bad" happened after coming into contact with another police officer after the raid.
Massey's statements are part of extensive testimony and other
newly released evidence that shed light months later on the internal Louisville police investigation into Taylor's death.
Between the young woman's death and the resulting investigations, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Louisville and other parts of the country to demand responsibility for the death of Breonna Taylor.
Also to express his frustration at the grand jury ruling regarding the officers who shot the young woman, who were not charged with murder.
Taylor was shot multiple times after police woke her up when entering her home.
["I never had faith": Breonna Taylor's family criticizes the attorney general and demands to make public the transcripts of his investigation]
When police came through the door with a battering ram, Taylor and her boyfriend at the time, Kenneth Walker, were suddenly awakened, who fired once from the bedroom because he did not understand who was breaking into the apartment.
Walker has said he asked many times who it was and received no response.
The officers' argument as to why they fired so many bullets is that they were repelling an alleged assault from Walker's shooting.
Although the documents made public did not include
the audio of the personal conversations that the agents had during the raid
while they had their body cameras activated.
Supposedly because those conversations "had nothing to do with the scene or the case," the police alleged, although according to Taylor's relatives, with those recordings it could be verified
if the officers even indicated that it was the police knocking on the door.
The grand jury in the case, which charged one of the officers with "reckless and risky actions" because he opened fire on a window in Taylor's neighbors without seeing who he was shooting at, then suggested that
the prosecutor in Louisville never gave them to understand that they could study the case as one of homicide.
A member of the grand jury then demanded that the transcripts of their deliberations be revealed, and from there the documents about the reason for the raid in which Taylor was shot to death came to light.
[A man dies after being shot in a park in Louisville, Kentucky, during a protest over the Breonna Taylor case]
Officer Brett Hankison, who was fired, was the only officer charged by the grand jury.
Breonna Taylor case: they rule out accusing the policemen involved of murder
Sept.
23, 202002: 23
The search warrant against Taylor's apartment was approved as part of the narcotics investigation that revolved around Glover, but no drugs were found in the home of the shot.
Taylor's name came up in the narcotics case, at least in part, because he had posted several bail bonds from 2017 to January 2020 for Glover and another defendant, Darreal Forest, in amounts that reached $ 5,000, according to published police files. .
The Taylor family's attorney, Sam Aguiar, said the release of the files was "long overdue."
"We believe that public opinion will understand even more why we are so frustrated with the way this investigation was carried out
and why there was no criminal responsibility," said the lawyer.
Aguiar also argued about the relationship between Taylor and Glover: “You don't see anything in these files that denotes any kind of connection between the two during the vast majority of February and March.
So the question still arises: what made you decide to go to Taylor's house? "He explained.
[City of Louisville reaches compensation agreement with Breonna Taylor's family]
Files released by the grand jury include investigation letters, interview transcripts, officer body camera videos, audio and video files of interviews, as well as crime scene unit reports and search warrants.
Some items were withheld for legal or privacy reasons.
The explicit photos and videos of Taylor's body were published with elements "blurred, out of respect" for the victim and his relatives, police explained.
Taylor's murder emerged Wednesday during the campaign debate between President Donald Trump's Vice President Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, the running mate of Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Harris condemned the murders of Taylor, and also George Floyd in Minnesota, and spoke about protests against racial injustice that Trump has described as "riots" when he called for law and order.
"We will never tolerate violence, but we must always fight for the values we hold dear," Harris argued in the nationally televised debate.
The candidate said she did not believe that justice had been served in Taylor's case, adding that if the Democratic nomination won the November election, she would ban police strangulation, stating that Floyd would be alive today if such an impediment existed.
Pence said her heart breaks for Taylor's family, but she trusts the US judicial system
.
He said it was "remarkable" that Harris, as a former attorney general, questioned the grand jury's decision not to charge any officers with murder.
[They report that the prosecution offered Breonna Taylor's ex-boyfriend a reduced sentence if he indicted her in a drug case]