Breonna Taylor: Ballistics Report Casts Doubt That Her Boyfriend Shot Police Officer
VICE News reports that a ballistics report by the Kentucky State Police of the shooting in Breonna Taylor’s apartment can’t definitively say that the 9mm bullet that hit Louisville officer John Mattingly in his thigh came from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Mattingly has asserted that Walker fired upon officers when they busted into Taylor’s apartment, as justification for them to fire their guns, ultimately resulting in Taylor’s death.
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An attorney for Walker, Steven Romines, also alleged to CNN that his team has been able to get a hold of an LMPD personnel record that indicated that Officer Brett Hankison, who fired the bullets that killed Taylor, had also been issued a 9mm weapon — throwing doubt on the attorney general Daniel Cameron’s claim that only Walker had a 9mm weapon that night.
On Sept 23, Cameron said that the investigation into the shooting had ruled out “friendly fire” for being the cause of Hankison’s gunshot wound. That supposed shot was the reason that the officers returned fire and, in the process, killed Taylor.
The Kentucky State Police’s ballistics report states “due to limited markings of comparative value,” the 9mm bullet in question that struck Mattingly was neither identified nor eliminated as having been fired” from the gun owned by Walker.
Since the beginning, Walker has said that he fired off a warning shot from his gun because he thought that intruders were breaking in when it was, in fact, police who were trying to serve a “no-knock” search warrant as a part of a drug investigation.
The ballistics report is the start of many other questions for such a troubling night. It’s clear that although the officers involved were acquitted of her murder, with a grand jury handing out three wanton endangerment charges instead, the investigation to unearth the truth about what really happened that night has just begun.
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