“I knew they were trying to get at him, and it looked like they were being executed with that rifle,” Mr. Hankinson said.
The police chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department fired Mr. Hankinson three months after the raid, saying he violated department rules by shooting “blindly” into the apartment through a shuttered window and door. Mr. Hankinson testified that he fired in response to seeing flashes of muzzle fire illuminating the window, not knowing that they came from the officers’ weapons.
The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, which led Mr. Hankinson’s prosecution, did not file charges against any of the officers whose bullets hit Ms. Taylor, Detective Miles Cosgrove, and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly. Mr. Cosgrove, who the FBI claimed fired the fatal shot, was eventually fired from the department, as was the detective who prepared the search warrant. Mr. Mattingly, the officer Mr. Walker shot, retired last year.
In Thursday’s closing speeches, Mr. Hankinson’s attorney, Stew Matthews, tried to shift the blame for what happened in part to Mr. Walker, who he said was the “common denominator” of the case because he opened fire on police officers when they entered the room. flat.
In response, Mr. Hankinson “did what he thought he should have done at that moment,” the lawyer said. Mr. Matthews reiterated that Mr. Hankinson did not know that there was another apartment behind Ms. Taylor’s apartment where his bullets could hit. He said the jury could not have found Mr. Hankinson guilty if he had not been aware of this risk.
The offense of “gratuitous endangerment”, a felony, required the jury to find that Mr. Hankinson had “without cause” done something which created a substantial risk of death or serious injury to neighbors, and had done so with “the utmost indifference to the value of human life”. “.
In the prosecutor’s closing remarks, Barbara Whaley, Assistant Attorney General, focused on the fear Ms Napper felt with her family as they hid in their apartment. She said it would have been “obvious” to Mr. Hankinson that there was an apartment behind Miss Taylor’s apartment because her front door was right next to hers.