Louisville police have fired two officers involved in the raid that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death, and in part launched a summer of protests, authorities said.
Dets. Joshua Jaynes and Myles Cosgrove learned last week that the department was planning to fire them, and the terminations became official according to Louisville police on Tuesday.
Taylor, who had no criminal record, was sleeping with her friend Kenneth Walker when regular officers entered her apartment in the early hours of March 13 to make a drug request.
Walker, who had a license to carry a weapon, called 911 and believed the house had been invaded and set on fire by criminals and wounded one of the officers in the leg.
It was then that the police fired back and killed Taylor, who was unarmed. Cosgrove fired the shot that killed Taylor, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said in September.
Jaynes was not at Taylor’s apartment when a gunfire erupted, but hours earlier he had secured the search warrant that led to the deadly confrontation.
The deaths of Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody, and the initial decisions not to charge the individuals charged with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Georgia, have a summer of international protest fueled against systemic racism.
Despite the outcry against Taylor’s shooting, no criminal charges were filed in her death.
Instead, the former Det. Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, is accused of shooting blindly in an apartment and recklessly endangering Taylor’s neighbors.
