Tamika Palmer, mom of Breonna Taylor listens to testimony within the trial of Brett Hankison Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photograph/Timothy D. Easley, Pool)
LOUISVILLE, KY. --
The acquittal of an ex-Louisville police officer tied to the botched drug raid that ended with Breonna Taylor's demise is stirring the frustrations of her household and protesters who marched for months in her title.
Taylor's mom, Tamika Palmer, and different relations sat in on Brett Hankison's trial for a number of days within the hopes that the one particular person charged within the March 13, 2020, raid could be criminally punished.
Palmer left the courtroom shortly and silently Thursday after a jury cleared the previous Louisville narcotics detective of wanton endangerment expenses.
"To be clear these expenses weren't for Breonna Taylor however nonetheless he ought to of been discovered responsible," Palmer later wrote in a social media submit.
Taylor's youthful sister, Ju'Niyah Palmer, questioned how Hankison could possibly be cleared of wrongdoing.
"It is like they consistently stroll over my sister!" she wrote in a submit after the decision. She lived with Taylor on the time of the raid however was out of city that night time.
Taylor's demise loomed over the two-week trial, although prosecutors confused that it wasn't about her taking pictures demise or the warrant that introduced armed cops to her door, however reasonably the menace they mentioned Hankison posed to neighbors when he fired into Taylor's residence. Among the a number of bullets Hankison fired from his gun lodged within the wall of the neighbors' residence.
The lone picture of Taylor displayed on the trial was a criminal offense scene exhibit displaying her lifeless physique on the finish of a darkened hallway.
She was fatally shot by two of Hankison's fellow officers after they broke down her entrance door and returned fireplace when her boyfriend fired a handgun. The anger over her demise and the method that led armed officers to her door helped spur large racial injustice protests in the summertime of 2020, together with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.
Protesters in Louisville have lamented that nobody has been charged for Taylor's demise, whereas the white males who pursued and killed Arbery and the Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on Floyd's neck had been arrested and convicted of crimes.
Just a few dozen demonstrators held a short march in Louisville on Thursday night time after the jury delivered its verdict within the Hankison case, returning to the general public sq. the place they gathered for months in 2020.
"All people bought justice for 2020 however in Kentucky we will not even get wanton endangerment expenses," Tyra Walker, co-chair of the Kentucky Alliance Towards Racist and Political Repression, mentioned on the gathering.
One other small group of protesters gathered downtown Friday, a day after the decision, holding indicators and chanting Taylor's title.
Amongst them was Jeffery Compton, who mentioned the jury's verdict sends a message that "in the event you dwell subsequent door to anyone Black, you will get shot (at) and so they can get away with it."
Louisville's mayor, who has been closely criticized over the raid and the conduct of his police division throughout 2020 protests, mentioned Thursday that the decision "provides to the frustration and anger of many over the lack to search out extra accountability" for Taylor's demise.
Lead prosecutor Barbara Maines Whaley instructed jurors because the trial opened that they weren't there to "resolve who's accountable for the demise of Breonna Taylor." As a substitute, Whaley mentioned, they wanted to consider Taylor's neighbor, Cody Etherton, his girlfriend Chelsey Napper and Napper's younger son.
Hankison mentioned on the witness stand through the trial that Taylor's demise was a tragedy and "she did not have to die that night time," an announcement that prompted Tamika Palmer to storm out of the courtroom. The following day he was discovered not responsible on three expenses of wanton endangerment, a low-level felony that might have landed him in jail for one to 5 years.
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Related Press reporter Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report. Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for The Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
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