Louisville Agrees to Pay Breonna Taylor’s Boyfriend, Who Fired at Police, $2M in Settlements

Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, settled a pair of lawsuits Monday against the city of Louisville, according to his attorneys.

The city said it will pay $2 million per the settlements filed in federal and state court, according to Walker attorney Steve Romines, CBS News reported Tuesday:

Walker and Taylor were settled in bed for the night when they were roused by banging on her apartment door around midnight on March 13, 2020. Police were outside with a drug warrant, and they used a battering ram to knock down the door. Walker fired a single shot from a handgun, striking Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg. Mattingly and two other officers then opened fire, killing Taylor.

Following the shooting, establishment media claimed officers entered the woman’s apartment without knocking or announcing themselves. However, in Mattingly’s book, 12 Seconds in the Dark: A Police Officer’s Firsthand Account of the Breonna Taylor Raid, he informs readers it was a “knock and announce” warrant, Breitbart News reported in March.

He notes the warrant for Taylor’s apartment was part of an effort to find and apprehend Jamarcus Glover, and “it was initially signed as a ‘no knock’ but since police had ‘trackers and phone pings on the main targets, the no-knock would not be utilized at [Taylor’s] location,'” the outlet said.

Glover had reportedly been the young woman’s sometime boyfriend.

Mattingly said he and his team wore tactical vests with the word POLICE on the back, adding he knocked hard two times and began announcing officers were outside the door for at least 45 seconds.

The officers eventually rammed the door three times to open it and he stayed on the left side of the door frame, but when he entered, he saw two figures entering the hallway from a bedroom.

He wrote:

My eyes fixated on the barrel of the 9mm semi-auto handgun that the man I now know was Kenneth Walker had outstretched. By the time my mind registered it was a gun, I saw the flash, heard the bang, and felt the smash to my thigh simultaneously. The bullet had ripped through the wallet in my front pocket and penetrated my thigh. It was like a piercing hot rod going through my leg.

Mattingly returned fire toward the threat and following a life saving surgery, he was informed a young woman had been standing next to Walker and was fatally shot. She was eventually identified as Breonna Taylor.

According to Mattingly, she was standing in the hallway with Walker when he fired at police before diving into the bedroom, leaving her in the hallway.

“Mattingly said Breonna was shot as police returned fire into the hallway. He noted the claims that she was shot while lying in her bed are simply inaccurate,” the Breitbart News report stated.

In September 2020, Walker claimed, “Breonna and I did not know who was banging on the door, but the police know what they did.”

Authorities initially charged Walker with attempted murder of an officer but those charges were later dropped, per the CBS report.