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Officer charged in Breonna Taylor case pleads not guilty

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (NewsNation Now) — The only Louisville, Kentucky, police officer indicted by a grand jury investigating the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor pleaded not guilty to three counts of wanton endangerment at his arraignment on Monday.

Former detective Brett Hankison was indicted on Wednesday and charged with endangering Taylor’s neighbors with bullets he fired into an adjacent apartment during a March 13 drug raid. The other two officers involved in Taylor’s shooting were not charged at all.


Hankison’s lawyer asked that his client be allowed to keep firearms for self-defense. He said Hankison, who was fired in June, “has received a number of threats.” The judge turned down the request.

Hankison was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in June for his actions during the raid on Taylor’s apartment.

Taylor, 26, a Black emergency medical technician and aspiring nurse, was struck by six bullets moments after she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were roused from bed in the commotion of the raid.