Former Louisville Detective Brett Hankison's lawyer compared his actions on the night of Breonna Taylor's death to a 9/11 hero

• Attorney Stew Mathews gave closing arguments in the case of Brett Hankison.
• Hankison was one of the Louisville cops on the scene of Breonna Taylor's killing.

The lawyer representing Brett Hankison, the only former officer who was indicted after the botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor, compared his client to a 9/11 hero.

Attorney Stew Mathews told jurors in his closing argument Thursday that the former detective didn't know that there was an apartment behind the one that he fired his gun into with the intention of ending a threat to his "brother officers."

Mathews said that he sometimes thinks about the planes striking the twin towers on September 11, 2001. While many people ran from the scene, police officers and firefighters ran toward the attack, he said.

"And that's what Brett Hankison did here," Mathews said. "He thought he was saving his fellow officers."

Hankison isn't charged with killing Taylor, but pleaded not guilty to three charges of wanton endangerment for shooting into a next door neighbor's apartment.

The March 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor was in response to a no-knock warrant officers were executing at Taylor's boyfriend's apartment.

When officers entered the apartment, Kenneth Walker fired a gun, which he has said was because he thought his home was being broken into.

In response to that shot, officers opened fire on the apartment complex. Taylor was shot eight times.

None of the three officers involved, including Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were charged in her death. Hankison, however, was charged with firing blindly that night, with one of his shots entering a neighbor's apartment.

Mathews told jurors in his closing argument that the former detective didn't know that there was an apartment behind the one that he fired his gun into with the intention of ending a threat to his "brother officers."

In his closing argument, which came a day after Hankison testified on his own behalf, Mathews said his could have run to the parking lot and "just kept going," when he thought officers were being fired at, but he didnt.

"He thought he was protecting his brother officers from being executed," Mathews said. "His perception was wrong, but remember he had to make that spit second decision."

On Wednesday, Hankison, who cried on the stand, testified that he fired 10 rounds from the side of the apartment, intending to aim at a figure in a hallway. Several rounds, however, went into a neighboring apartment where a child was sleeping.

Hankison told jurors that he was surprised when he learned there was a woman in the apartment where the warrant was executed. He called the night a tragedy that "didn't have to happen."

"I think everybody in this courtroom and probably everyone in the world agrees that the death of Breonna Taylor was a terrible thing," Mathews said in his closing. "And, as Brett Hankison said yesterday, it never should have occurred."

The jury began deliberating just before noon on Thursday.

If convicted, Hankison faces up to 15 years in prison.