“Do not shed innocent blood in the land which YHWH, your God, is giving you as an inheritance, lest the blood guilt be upon all of you”
Deuteronomy 19:10
On March 12, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an ER Tech and former EMT, went sleep in her bed next to her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, in Louisville, Kentucky. In a different part of town, police secure two separate “no-knock” warrants. One for a somewhat well known location where drugs are passed around, and one for Taylor’s apartment, naming Taylor specifically. It is now clear that the second warrant was entirely a mistake.
Shortly after midnight on March 13, Taylor and Walker were awakened by loud banging on their door. Both called out into the darkness, trying to ascertain what had happened, only to be met with silence. While the police dispute what happened next, the neighbors in the apartments surrounding Taylor’s seem to corroborate Kenneth Walker’s account. The
police use a battering ram to break open the door, at which point Walker, who is a registered and licensed gun owner, and who had awakened to unidentified intruder’s breaking into the apartment after midnight, grabs his registered weapon and fires a single shot, that hits an one police officer in the thigh. Police return fire in what is described as “a hail of bullets” leaving Breonna Taylor dead, having been shot multiple times (“at least 8 times”), despite being completely unarmed and not even affiliated with the drug ring police were attempting to find. The apartment next door, where a pregnant mother with her 5 year old were, had multiple bullet fragments as did the upstairs apartment.
This happened on March 13, 2020. Originally, police claimed Walker had killed Breonna. When that did not match any of the evidence, they charged Walker with attempted murder of a police officer. The three officers who entered Taylor’s apartment have been placed on (paid) administrative leave. No charges have been filed. No state or local investigations have begun. One FBI investigation was recently announced, but expectations are low that anything will be done. No drugs were ever recovered from her apartment.
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