Questioning of potential jurors begins Tuesday in the trial of a former Kentucky police officer involved in a botched drug raid that killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical technician, the Associated Press reports. Brett Hankison faces three counts of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing wildly into Taylor’s neighbors’ apartments in March 2020. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot several times during the raid. No drugs were found, and the search warrant was found to be flawed. No officers were charged for their role in causing Taylor’s death, despite protests nationwide, with many demonstrators demanding that the officers involved stand trial for murder.
Kentucky’s Attorney General, Daniel Cameron determined that the officers fired into the woman’s apartment in self-defense after her boyfriend, who was in the apartment, shot at them first. Cameron, who is Black, did not give a grand jury considering the case the option of charging those officers in connection with Taylor’s death, though he acknowledged that her death was heartbreaking. Hankison is the only officer facing any criminal charges from the incident. Jury selection is expected to take weeks. The pool of Jefferson County residents will be whittled down to 12 jurors and alternates.