"He will live with the effects of being put in harm's way due to a falsified warrant, to being a victim of a hailstorm of gunfire and to suffering the unimaginable and horrific death of Breonna Taylor," his attorney said in a statement.
Louisville will pay Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, $2 million to settle two lawsuits against the city, according to reports.
Walker’s attorneys announced Monday that their client will receive the money after the city agreed to pay to settle lawsuits, which were filed in federal and state court, according to a statement to the Associated Press.
Attorney Steven Romines added that Taylor's death "will haunt Kenny for the rest of his life."
"He will live with the effects of being put in harm's way due to a falsified warrant, to being a victim of a hailstorm of gunfire and to suffering the unimaginable and horrific death of Breonna Taylor," Romines said in the statement obtained by the Associated Press.
Walker’s attorneys said that part of the settlement would be used to set up a scholarship fund for law school students interested in practicing civil rights law. Another portion will be contributed to the Center for Innovations in Community Safety, a police and community reform Center at Georgetown Law School, the Associated Press reported.
It is the second settlement paid out by the city in the Taylor tragedy. In September 2020, the city of Louisville paid Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, $12 million in a settlement.
In August 2022, former Louisville detective Kelly Goodlett, 35, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy, where she admitted that she had conspired with another officer, Joshua Jaynes, to falsify a search warrant application and had later lied to cover up their act, The New York Times reported.
With her guilty plea, Goodlett has now become the first officer to be convicted in the raid that killed Taylor over two years ago, The New York Times reported.
Goodlett faces a sentence of no more than five years in prison, plus up to a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Her sentencing tentatively is set for Nov. 22, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
Goodlett is expected to be a star witness at the trial of two of her former LMPD colleagues, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, when they are tried on civil rights charges in connection with Taylor’s death, the Louisville Courier Journal reported.
It was announced in August 2022 that Goodlett, along with Brett Hankison, as well as Jaynes and Meany, were brought up on federal charges for alleged civil rights violations in connection to raiding Taylor’s home.
Jaynes, Meany and Hankinson have all pleaded not guilty to the charges they are facing and will go to trial sometime next year.
The charges coming from the U.S Department of Justice are connected to the shots fired into Taylor’s home by Hankinson and to the other three officers’ roles in the drafting of the warrant. These charges were given to those three officers on the basis that the warrant ultimately led to Taylor’s death due to the dangerous situation it created, authorities said.
In documentation previously obtained by the Louisville Courier-Journal, police were authorized to carry out a “no-knock” warrant on Taylor’s Louisville home on March 13, 2020, as part of a narcotics investigation of a person who lived in a home 10 miles away. Neither Taylor nor her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were the investigation's target. Police had suspected, though, that Taylor’s home was used to receive drugs because cops said her ex-boyfriend was using her address to mail drugs through the post office.
Authorities said they identified themselves, despite the “no-knock” warrant. Police said the officers were “immediately” met by gunfire when they entered Taylor and Walker's home, at which point they returned fire. More than 25 bullets from three officers who entered Taylor’s home were fired, while others entered nearby apartments, one of which contained a 5-year-old child.
Walker, who was in bed with Taylor the night she died, was arrested and charged initially with attempted murder of a police officer after he fired his legally owned pistol once, hitting an officer in the leg in what he says was self-defense because he believed attackers were invading his home. The charges against him were dropped without prejudice by a judge in 2021.
Taylor was struck by eight bullets, killing her on the scene. Neither Taylor nor Walker had any criminal history and no drugs were located in the home.
In March 2022, a jury acquitted Hankison on a charge of wanton endangerment. A grand jury also cleared the other two officers, Detectives Miles Cosgrove and Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who shot Taylor, NBC News reported.
