Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend reaches $2 million settlement with City of Louisville
Dec 13, 2022, 5:34 PM
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, has reached a $2 million dollar settlement with the City of Louisville. Walker (left) stands next to a painting of Breonna Taylor at a gathering in March, on the second anniversary of her death. (Jon Cherry/Reuters/File via CNN)
(Jon Cherry/Reuters/File via CNN)
(CNN) — Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, has reached a $2 million settlement with the City of Louisville, resolving lawsuits Walker filed in response to “the unlawful police raid that led to Ms. Taylor’s death,” a news release from Walker’s legal team says.
Breonna Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by Louisville Metro Police Department officers on March 13, 2020, as they executed a search warrant as part of a narcotics investigation in the early morning hours.
Just before 1 a.m., officers battered down the door of Taylor’s apartment. The officers said they announced their presence before entering.
Walker later said he and Taylor yelled to ask who was at the door, but they did not get a response. Believing police to be intruders, Walker grabbed a gun he legally owned and fired a shot when the officers broke through the door, CNN previously reported.
Walker was accused of shooting Louisville Metro Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the leg and was charged at first with attempted murder of a police officer and first-degree assault, but prosecutors later decided to drop the charges.
Walker filed a lawsuit in state court in Sept. 2020, followed by a federal civil rights lawsuit in March 2021. Both lawsuits named as defendants the Louisville Metro Government and some of the individual officers involved in obtaining a “materially false” search warrant and Taylor’s fatal shooting.
The settlement resolves both lawsuits, the news release says.
“While this tragedy will haunt Kenny for the rest of his life, he is pleased that this chapter of his life is completed. He will live with the effects of being put in harm’s way due to a falsified warrant, to being a victim of a hailstorm of gunfire and to suffering the unimaginable and horrific death of Breonna Taylor,” Steve Romines, one of the attorneys representing Walker, said in the release.
The statement does not indicate whether the agreement included an admission of wrongdoing by the defendants.
CNN has reached out to the city for comment but has not yet received a response.
About six months after Taylor was killed, the city paid a historic $12 million settlement to her family to settle a wrongful death lawsuit. At the time, Mayor Greg Fischer said the agreement did not include an admission of wrongdoing.
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