New details about the night Breonna Taylor was killed are raising fresh questions about what happened after police shot her.
Breonna, 26, was shot just after midnight on March 13 in her Louisville apartment when officers executing a no knock search warrant tied to a narcotics investigation fired more than 20 rounds. She was hit five times. Reports say no drugs were found in the home.
According to a recorded police interview taken about three hours after the shooting, her boyfriend Kenneth said Breonna was coughing and calling out after she was hit, while he was on the phone with her mother yelling for help. Kenneth said officers did not rush in to help.
Jefferson County Coroner Barbara Weakley-Jones disputed that account to the New York Times. She said Breonna likely died within a minute, that her injuries could not have been survived, and that the coughing was agonal breathing, which can happen after the heart has stopped.
Attorneys Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker, who filed a lawsuit for Breonna’s family, said she was not killed immediately and lived another five to six minutes. Dispatch logs show police did not radio that she was inside until about 1:10 a.m., nearly 30 minutes after the shooting, and records show no one went in to help her for more than 20 minutes.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer called the events “a horrible tragedy that should never happen again.”
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