The nightmare for Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend just won’t seem to end. Kenneth Walker, 27, is being sued by one of the officers involved in his girlfriend’s fatal shooting on March 13 when officers attempted to serve a no-knock warrant at her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment.
Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly claims in his suit that Walker caused him “severe trauma, mental anguish, and emotional distress” the night Taylor was killed.
Mattingly, who was shot in the leg by Walker during the incident, filed a countersuit in response to one Walker has filed against the City of Louisville, its police department and Kentucky’s Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Walker is suing for false arrest and imprisonment, malicious prosecution, abuse of process and negligence, assault and battery.
Walker has repeatedly maintained the police did not announce themselves when they entered the apartment the night Taylor, 26, was killed. He said he fired a warning shot because he thought the officers were intruders. Mattingly says the opposite — that the officers did announce themselves several times.
A licensed gun owner, Walker has no criminal background and no drugs were found in the apartment. Walker was still arrested and charged with attempted murder, however. The charges were eventually dropped.
The claim states “Walker’s conduct in shooting Mattingly is outrageous, intolerable, and offends all accepted standards of decency and morality.”
However, Walker’s legal team have called the lawsuit another attempt to deflect responsibility for taking Taylor’s life.
“The law is not on their side, the facts are not on their side and the truth is not on their side,” one of Walker’s attorneys, Frederick Moore, told “CBS This Morning.” “How can you sue Kenny when he was acting lawfully?”
Another of Walker’s attorneys, Steve Romines, said in a statement that Walker is protected by Kentucky’s “stand your ground” law.
“Kenny Walker is protected by law under KRS 503.085 and is immune from both criminal prosecution and civil liability as he was acting in self defense in his own home,” Romines said.
“Even the most basic understanding of Kentucky’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and the ‘Castle Doctrine’ evidences this fact,” Romines added. “One would think that breaking into the apartment, executing his girlfriend and framing him for a crime in an effort to cover up her murder would be enough for them. Yet this baseless attempt to further victimize and harass Kenny indicates otherwise.”
This is not the first time Mattingly has said he was a “victim” in the shooting. He stated the claim in an Oct. 20 interview with ABC News.
“I was a victim in this as well. My family has been a victim in this. They have had to go in hiding. They have had death threats,” Mattingly said. “When somebody sits back from their mansion and accuses somebody, they don’t know of being a racist and being a dirty cop, being a murderer when that’s not the case, that does affect you.”
One now-fired officer, Brett Hankison, was indicted by a grand jury for wanton endangerment for shooting into one of Taylor’s neighbors’ apartments; however, no one was held accountable for Taylor’s death.
Cameron said Mattingly and fellow officer Myles Cosgrove were justified in the shooting.
A grand juror came forward Oct. 20 and revealed they were not given the option to charge any of the three officers involved with homicide in the case.
“Being one of the jurors on the Breonna Taylor case was a learning experience,” a person identified as grand juror No. 1 said in a statement through an attorney. “The grand jury was not presented any charges other than the three Wanton endangerment charges against Detective Hankison. The grand jury did not have homicide offenses explained to them. … The grand jury was not given the opportunity to deliberate on those charges only on what was presented to them. I cannot speak for other jurors but I can help the truth be told.”
Moore pointed out to CBS how audacious he thinks Mattingly’s suit is.
“You kill the guy’s girlfriend in front of him, you shoot at him over 30 times, you change his life and then on top of that, when he tries to exercise his constitutional rights and receive justice for what’s happened to him, you then vindictively file a frivolous lawsuit against him,” Moore said.
