Newly-released bodycam footage shows moments after Breonna Taylor raid
Newly surfaced police bodycam footage shows the moments after the botched apartment raid that resulted in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
In the 44-second clip posted to Twitter Thursday by an attorney for Louisville police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly — one of the three cops involved in the March 13 killing of Taylor — Mattingly is seen after he was shot in the leg.
“This is the raw video of Louisville officer Sgt. John Mattingly shortly after Kenneth Walker shot him. They called him a ‘murderer,’ when all he did was defend himself,” lawyer Todd McMurtry wrote in the tweet along with the footage. Walker was Taylor’s boyfriend, who exchanged gunfire with cops after they burst into Taylor’s apartment while executing a search warrant.
An officer could then be heard shouting “put him in the car,” as an injured Mattingly lays outside on the ground, according to the footage.
The clip then shows officers carrying Mattingly and placing him on the trunk of a car as one says, “Cover him, let’s go.”
During the raid, police fatally struck Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, with at least eight bullets.
The Louisville Metro Police Department has previously said that there was no bodycam footage of the raid and shooting of Taylor.
McMurtry told NBC News Friday that he obtained the video from his client and released it because he believes “it’s important for people to understand what happened to John Mattingly.”
The lawyer said he is representing Mattingly in regard to “claims for defamation and slander related to people calling him a murderer.”
The release of the video comes after a grand jury on Wednesday cleared current and former Louisville officers in the shooting death of Taylor.
One ex-cop, police detective Brett Hankison, was indicted on three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment for firing his gun into an apartment next to Taylor’s the night she was killed.
Mattingly and a third officer, Myles Cosgrove, were not indicted.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said this week the investigation showed that the officers acted in self-defense, returning fire only after Walker fired at them as they executed a search warrant as part of a drug probe, though no drugs were found.
“According to Kentucky law, the use of force by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified to protect themselves,” Cameron said Wednesday. “This justification bars us from pursuing criminal charges in Miss Breonna Taylor’s death.”