Breonna Taylor was alive after police shot her, but no one tried to treat her.
Taylor, 26, was murdered just after midnight by three Louisville police officers who fired 20 shots into the woman’s home while executing a “no-knock” search warrant. Police were searching the home for drugs, but no drugs were found. No information about the incident shows that Taylor was dead after being hit by bullets five times. She didn’t die right away; in fact, she struggled, coughed, and yelled for her mother to help her, according to her boyfriend #KennethWalker.
“(Police are) yelling like, ‘Come out, come out,’ and I’m on the phone with her (mom). I’m still yelling help because she’s over here coughing and, like, I’m just freaking out,” Walker said in a recorded police interview that took place three hours after the shooting. However, the Jefferson County coroner denied Walker’s story, telling the New York Times that Taylor likely died within a minute of being shot and could not have been saved. Regardless, records show that no authority present tried to save her.
After being fatally shot, Taylor’s body stayed in the same place for over 20 minutes, and she received no medical attention, according to dispatch logs. “Breonna, who was unarmed in her hallway, was struck by several rounds of gunfire. She was not killed immediately. Rather, she lived for another five to six minutes before ultimately succumbing to her injuries on the floor of her home,” said attorneys Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of Taylor’s family.
In response to the situation, Mayor Greg Fischer wrote in a statement. “You have an LMPD officer shot. His fellow officers rush to save him, not knowing if they will be shot at if they try to go inside, and not knowing that anyone inside has been hit. It is just a horrible tragedy that should never happen again.”
