The key witness claiming that police announced themselves the night of the deadly raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment drastically changed his account of what went down.
According to Vice, Aarin Sarpee was picking up his daughter from the apartment above Taylor’s during the raid, even getting into an argument with Detective Brett Hankison while officers were banging on Taylor’s door.
A week after the shooting, Sergeant Jason Vance, with the LMPD Public Integrity Unit, which investigates officer-involved shootings, spoke to Sarpee, who responded, “no, nobody identified themselves,” when asked if officers identified themselves.
On May 15, PIU investigator Sgt. Amanda Seeyle called Sarpee back, at which point he changed his answer to hearing officers say, “this is the cops.”
More than a dozen other neighbors who were present the night of the shooting told Vice that they never heard police identify themselves.
Steve Romines, attorney for Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, told Vice that “you cannot in good faith look at Sarpee’s interviews and try to rely on him to establish that police announced themselves.”
“He’s obviously confused over the course of the interviews,” Romines said. “It’s pretty clear to me that they’re trying to create the narrative that benefits them.”
The contradictions in Sarpee’s testimony call into question Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s account of events, in which he relied heavily on Sarpee’s testimony that officers announced themselves while executing the search warrant on Taylor’s home despite what dozens of other witnesses have said. In following the narrative that officers ID’d themselves, no charges would be filed against the officers that executed the botched raid.
