With the absence of body camera footage, The New York Times visual investigation team used facts from the Breonna Taylor case to digitally recreate the events of the night she was killed in her home by police. No cameras captured the last minutes of Breonna Taylor’s life. The New York Times’ video reconstructs what happened and shows the mistakes that led to her killing.
None of the police officers who raided Breonna Taylor’s home wore body cameras, impeding the public from a full understanding of what happened. The Times’s visual investigation team built a 3-D model of the scene and pieced together critical sequences of events to show how poor planning and shoddy police work led to a fatal outcome.
The New York Times reported
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment on March 13, 2020, when white plainclothes officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove of the Louisville Metro Police Department forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations.
Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside the apartment with her when the officers knocked on the door and then forced entry. Officers stated that they announced themselves as police before forcing entry, but Walker said he did not hear any announcement, thought the officers were intruders, and fired a warning shot at them. According to officials, it hit Mattingly in the leg, and the officers fired 32 shots in return. Walker was unhurt but Taylor was hit by six bullets and died. According to police, Taylor’s home was never searched.
A sculpture honoring Breonna Taylor was vandalized in downtown Oakland, California on Dec. 26. in in what the artists are calling an “act of racist aggression.” Oakland police are investigating the act of vandalism that left the ceramic bust severely damaged and a community outraged.
The bust was installed two weeks ago in Latham Square near City Hall by Leo Carson, a sculptor who was working as a food server before the COVID-19 crisis caused restrictions to the restaurant industry.
