A Louisville police officer is suing Breonna Taylor's boyfriend in connection with a shooting injury he claims Kenneth Walker caused
- Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was one of several Louisville officers who participated in a botched raid at Breonna Taylor's apartment in March.
- When the officer's entered her apartment, Mattingly was struck in the thigh by a bullet that matched the pistol Walker's boyfriend said he fired in fear of a home invasion.
- Walker has sued city officials and police for their conduct during the raid, and now Mattingly has filed a countersuit.
The Louisville police sergeant who was shot in the thigh when executing a warrant at Breonna Taylor's home is counter-suing her boyfriend for damages.
Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was among the seven officers at Taylor's apartment with a no-knock warrant on March 19. They were executing a warrant as a part of a narcotics investigation, but drugs were never found.
The officers claimed that they knocked and announced themselves before breaching Taylor's front door. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said they weren't aware that the police were on the other side of the door, so he fired a gunshot with his legally-owned firearm as a warning. Police claim that shot struck Mattingly in his upper thigh, causing serious injuries.
"Walker's conduct in shooting Mattingly is outrageous, intolerable, and offends all accepted standards of decency and morality," Mattingly's attorney Kent Wicker wrote in the countersuit, viewed by Insider. "Walker's conduct has caused Defendant Mattingly severe trauma, mental anguish, and emotional distress."
The killing of Breonna Taylor, an Louisville EMT, by police is apart of international outrage that prompted police reform and anti-racism protests around the world.
Last month, a Louisville grand jury declined to charge Mattingly or his fellow officers Brett Hankinson and Detective Myles Cosgrove for murder in Taylor's shooting death. Hankison was charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment.
The charges against Hankison are for firing shots into a neighboring apartment. None of the charges are related to Taylor's death.
Walker, who said he was "scared to death" when police entered the apartment, was initially charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but the charges were dropped. He has since sued the city officials and police for immunity in prosecution going forward.
The city has already settled a case with Taylor's family for $12 million.
Mattingly said said, though, has said in interviews that he believes Walker is responsible for Taylor's death.
"With this narrow hallway, shooting from it, him diving out," Mattingly told the Louisville Courier-Journal."He put her in an impossible situation."
"Sgt. Mattingly was shot and nearly killed by Kenneth Walker," Wicker said in a statement provided to Insider. "He's entitled to, and should, use the legal process to seek a remedy for the injury that Walker has caused."
Walker's attorney, Steve Romines, told the Courier-Journal that "this is the latest in a cycle of police aggression, deflection of responsibility and obstruction of the facts."
Romines didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.
- Read more:
- 5 police officers involved in the raid in which Breonna Taylor was killed were part of another botched raid less than 2 years earlier
- Police didn't alert dispatch about Breonna Taylor until 27 minutes after they shot her. An injured officer was on his way to the hospital within 10 minutes of being shot.
- Attorneys for Breonna Taylor's family allege that police targeted her residence as part of a Louisville gentrification plan
- Breonna Taylor's family claims in a new court filing that she did not receive medical attention for up to 6 minutes after being shot