White neighbors ‘upset’ no charges filed for fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor: lawyer
The white couple whose apartment was shot up by police the night Breonna Taylor died are “upset” no charges were filed for the Black EMT’s homicide.
That’s according to their lawyer, who spoke to the Louisville Courier Journal on Thursday, a day after his clients were identified by their initials in the indictment charging former LMPD officer Brett Hankison with endangering their lives.
“My clients are very happy that Brett Hankison was indicted for shooting up their apartment,” lawyer Brandon Lawrence told the Courier Journal. “But they’re upset that no one was indicted for the shooting of Breonna Taylor.”
Lawrence represents Chelsey Napper and Cody Etherton in a civil lawsuit filed in May against Hankison, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Det. Myles Cosgrove.
“I think everyone that was affected that night deserves justice,” Lawrence told the newspaper. “I believe everyone affected that night was traumatized. Nobody deserved that to happen. None of them. They didn’t ask for it. They didn’t deserve it.”
Napper, who was pregnant at the time, was home in her apartment with her young son and Etherton when bullets shattered a sliding-glass door and allegedly zipped by Etherton’s head.
Their complaint reportedly claims the officers showed “a total disregard for the value of human life” when they unloaded 32 shots into Taylor’s apartment during a botched drug raid.
Taylor, an aspiring nurse who was working as an emergency room technician, was shot six times and died at the scene, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Wednesday.
There were no drugs in the home.
Cameron said Mattingly and Cosgrove were “justified” when they fired six and 16 bullets respectively because Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired first.
Lawyers for Taylor’s family say Walker, 27, only filed a single warning shot because he and Taylor were terrified at the time, thinking they were the victims of a criminal home invasion.
“Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said in his clearly confused 911 call.
———
©2020 New York Daily News
Visit New York Daily News at www.nydailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
