Former officer's shots were 'like a drive-by shooting' during Breonna Taylor raid, prosecutors say

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Federal prosecutors told a jury Wednesday that a former Louisville police detective's actions were like “a drive-by shooting” when he fired 10 bullets into the side of Breonna Taylor’s apartment the night she was shot to death by police.

That former detective, Brett Hankison, couldn’t see what he was shooting at the night of the 2020 raid, prosecutors argued during closing statements in Hankison’s federal retrial. A jury of six men and six women began deliberating in the afternoon on two charges that Hankison’s shots violated the civil rights of Taylor and her neighbors. The felony charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if Hankison is convicted.

Hankison’s federal trial last year ended in a mistrial when a jury deadlocked after failing to reach a verdict. He was acquitted in a 2022 in a state trial on wanton endangerment charges.

Hankison, 48, began firing after a fellow officer was struck by a bullet shot by Taylor’s boyfriend, who was inside the apartment. Officers returned fire at the door, killing Taylor. As the shooting started, Hankison went away from the door, rounded a corner and fired a volley of shots into Taylor’s sliding glass door and a window.