March 29, 2024
Local News

March planned in downtown DeKalb Saturday for justice for Breonna Taylor

There will be a protest for justice for Breonna Taylor, of Louisville, Kentucky, on Saturday in downtown DeKalb, according to a post on social media.

Posted on the DeKalb Black Lives Matter Facebook page, the march will meet at Memorial Park at the corner of First Street and Lincoln Highway downtown at 1 p.m., march to the DeKalb Police Department, 700 W. Lincoln Highway, and then back downtown.

Water will be available and signs are encouraged.

A grand jury decided this month not to charge any of the police officers involved with Taylor's death; instead, one officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with shooting into a neighboring home.

On March 13, Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency medical technician, was shot eight times to death by Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, police officers in the Louisville Metro Police Department in Louisville, Kentucky. The officers entered her apartment while Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were sleeping, serving a "no-knock" warrant, during a narcotics investigation and did not announce themselves as law enforcement officers before opening fire in the home.

The warrant used to search her home was connected to a suspect who did not live there, and no drugs were found inside. The use of no-knock warrants has since been banned by Louisville’s Metro Council.

Officer Brett Hankison was fired from the city’s police department June 23. A termination letter sent to him by interim Louisville Police Chief Robert Schroeder said the white officer had violated procedures by showing “extreme indifference to the value of human life” when he “wantonly and blindly” shot 10 rounds of gunfire into Taylor’s apartment in March.

Hankison, Sgt. Johnathan Mattingly, Officer Myles Cosgrove and the detective who sought the warrant, Joshua Jaynes, were placed on administrative reassignment after the shooting.

On Sept. 15, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the three officers brought by Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, agreeing to pay her $12 million and enact police reforms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.