For the first day of former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison’s retrial, federal prosecutors called some of the same early witnesses from the previous trial: former Louisville police officer Myles Cosgrove and Breonna Taylor’s neighbor, Chelsey Napper.
Cosgrove — who was fired from LMPD in 2021 — testified that he remembered former Sgt. Jon Mattingly knocked loudly on Taylor’s door and announced “police” before he and other officers forcefully entered the home after midnight on March 13, 2020.
Police broke down the door and Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a single shot at officers, hitting Mattingly in the leg. Walker later said he thought they were intruders and that he didn’t hear them say they were police. Cosgrove said he thought he fired six shots into the apartment. He said he learned after the incident that he fired 16 shots, some of which struck and killed Taylor in her home.
The defense alleged Hankison saw someone with a rifle in the hallway of Taylor’s home, causing Hankison to fire into the apartment to protect his fellow officers. Hankison made a similar argument during his state trial in 2022, when he was acquitted of wanton endangerment charges.
Prosecutors said Hankison blindly fired 10 shots through a window covered with blinds and a curtain at Taylor’s apartment. Some of the shots went through to a neighboring apartment where Napper, her boyfriend and her five-year-old were sleeping.
Just like the first day of Hankison’s last federal trial, Napper was the first witness called to testify on Monday. Napper — who was seven months pregnant at the time of the raid — said she woke up suddenly when she heard what sounded “like a bomb going off.”
Napper said her boyfriend yelled to her, saying there were bullets flying throughout the apartment. She said she then went to her son’s room and laid on top of him to protect him from the gunfire.
Napper said she didn’t hear police announce themselves outside Taylor’s apartment, nor did she know police were outside her apartment executing a warrant on her neighbor’s home.
She said she remembered hearing someone who sounded like a child yelling for help in a high-pitched voice in the neighboring apartment. She later learned that it was Walker who had screamed for help after Taylor was shot multiple times.
Following the incident, Napper, her boyfriend and her son were all diagnosed with PTSD, Napper said.
Taylor’s younger sister Ju’Niyah Palmer was last to testify Monday. At the time of the raid, Palmer was visiting San Diego when she got a call from her mother who said Taylor had died. When Palmer returned to the apartment to grab things for her sister’s funeral, she said she found several bullet holes through the walls of her room and her bedroom window. There was a stray bullet from the incident behind her dresser when she went into her room, Palmer said.
“I could’ve been dead with my sister,” Palmer said on the stand.
Hankison is facing the same charges as last year, when a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict, leading the judge to declare a mistrial. He faces one felony count for violating the civil rights of Taylor and Walker, and another for violating the rights of Napper, her boyfriend and her son.
Both charges carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, if convicted.
For the retrial, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings said she won’t allow any new evidence to be presented.
Hankison was one of four officers who were charged with violating Taylor’s civil rights in 2022 by the U.S. Department of Justice. Earlier that year, Hankison was acquitted of state-level wanton endangerment charges related to Napper and her family in 2022.
Last week, two other former officers connected to the raid, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany pleaded not guilty to the new federal charges filed by the DOJ. The two were involved in securing the search warrant on Taylor’s home which was proven to contain false information about Taylor’s connection to a known drug dealer.
