Officer Involved in the Raid That Killed Breonna Taylor Sentenced to Nearly 3 Years in Prison By Nicole Acosta

One of the ex-police officers who blindly shot into Breonna Taylor’s home during a botched “no-knock” raid in 2020 has been sentenced.

Brett Hankison, a former Louisville Metro Police Department detective, was sentenced by a federal judge to 33 months in prison on Monday, July 21, according to reports from the New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters. The prison term will be followed by three years of supervised probation.

Hankison, 49, was found guilty in November 2024 of using excessive force on 26-year-old Taylor and depriving her of her civil rights. 

Federal prosecutors found that during the police raid on March 13, 2020, Hankison blindly fired 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment but did not fire the bullets that killed Taylor, who was asleep in her bed, per a sentencing memorandum obtained by PEOPLE. 

Taylor, an aspiring nurse who had been working as an EMT, was in her apartment with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, when the officers busted into the home without warning. The warrant was connected to a narcotics investigation in which Taylor was not a suspect, and police did not find drugs or cash in her apartment. 

Walker believed the plain-clothed officers were intruders and opened fire on them, after which officers returned fire and killed Taylor in the process. An investigation determined ex-Louisville police detective Myles Cosgrove fired the shots that resulted in Taylor’s death. Another officer, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, was wounded in the shooting.

No criminal charges were filed at the time because investigators determined that the shooting was justifiable, as Walker had fired at cops first. Walker was charged with assault and attempted murder but his charges were later permanently dismissed.

Authorities later accused two former Louisville officers of falsifying the search warrant used to enter the home; the two officers, who were not present at the time of the shooting, are now facing federal charges. In 2023, Kelly Goodlett, who was not present during the raid, pleaded guilty to charges related to obtaining the warrant.

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Hankison is the only officer present during in the raid who has been convicted in connection with the case. Prior to his sentencing, the Department of Justice recommended Hankison should be sentenced to one day in prison, with credit for time served.

This marked Hankison’s second trial in this case, after a judge declared a mistrial last year. He was acquitted of separate state charges in March 2022.

At the sentencing on Monday, four protesters, including Taylor’s aunt, were arrested outside of the federal courthouse, WHAS 11 reported, citing police. They were released pending an upcoming court appearance.

Taylor’s shooting sparked months of protests in Louisville, and her name joined those of others invoked across the country by protesters seeking justice for Black victims of alleged police brutality. Her family reached a $12 million settlement with the city in 2020 after filing a wrongful-death lawsuit.

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Attorneys for Taylor’s family reacted to Hankison’s sentence, saying in a statement shared with PEOPLE, “While today’s sentence is not what we had hoped for — nor does it fully reflect the severity of the harm caused — it is more than what the Department of Justice sought. That, in itself, is a statement. The jury found Brett Hankison guilty, and that verdict deserved to be met with real accountability.”

“We respect the court’s decision,” added attorneys Ben Crump, Lonita Baker, and Sam Aguiar. “But we will continue to call out the DOJ’s failure to stand firmly behind Breonna’s rights and the rights of every Black woman whose life is treated as expendable.”