Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said in a new interview that he did not believe police were at the door during the March incident in which Taylor was fatally shot by officers in her Kentucky home.
Walker told “CBS This Morning” that he did not “have a clue” who was at the door, so he grabbed his weapon.
“If it was the police at the door and they just said ‘we’re the police,’ me or Breonna didn’t have a reason at all not to open the door to see what they wanted,” Walker said.
CBS’s Gayle King asked Walker during the interview, which will be aired in full on Wednesday if he considered that “a heavy knock like that, maybe it’s the police?”
“That’s why I never thought it was the police because why would the police be coming here?” Walker responded.
Walker told King that he and Taylor asked “several times” who was at the apartment door when police knocked.
“And there was no response. So the next thing I know the door is flying open,” Walker said.
Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency room technician, died on March 13 after Louisville police shot her while executing a search warrant at her apartment.
Walker fired at the officers, believing that they were intruders. The officers, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, returned the fire, hitting Taylor numerous times.
Walker and police have given different accounts of whether officers announced themselves.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) said last month that the police officers banged loudly on Taylor’s door and announced their presence.
A Kentucky grand jury last month did not bring any charges against officers in Taylor’s death, instead announcing lesser counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison. The charges are related to some of the bullets fired traveling into adjacent apartments.