24 September 2020
Louisville Metro Police Department said two officers were shot downtown in the Kentucky city late Wednesday, just hours after a grand jury announced an indictment in the Breonna Taylor case.
Driving the news: Metrosafe, the city's emergency services, said it received reports of a shooting at South Brook St. and Broadway Ave., near the area where protests were taking place. A police spokesperson told a press briefing the injuries of both officers were not life-threatening. One officer was "alert and stable" and the other was undergoing surgery, he said.
Context: Earlier on Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Brett Hankison, one of the Louisville police officers who barged into Breonna Taylor's home in the early hours of March 13, on three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots blindly into neighboring apartments.
- The grand jury did not, however, indict any of the three officers involved in the botched drug raid on homicide or manslaughter charges related to the death of Taylor.
- The two other officers who fired shots, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were not charged.
- Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said Mattingly and Cosgrove were "justified" in their actions because Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired the first shot. Walker said he mistook police for intruders and fired in self-dense.
Go deeper:"Not enough": Protesters react to no murder charges in Breonna Taylor case
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.