Lacefield told jurors that LMPD officers are told they “are accountable for every round” they fire. Steve Lacefield, LMPD’s firearms trainer in 2020, was called to the stand to explain the department’s policies around using deadly force. In addition to attacking the assault rifle argument, prosecutors also tried to dissuade jurors from believing that Hankison acted according to his training during the raid the way he was trained to. LMPD firearms trainer says officers ‘are accountable for every round’ The competing claims may be significant because Mathews has argued Hankison’s actions were “justified and reasonable” based on what the former officer perceived the circumstances to be. Hankison’s attorney, Stew Mathews, argued during opening arguments on Wednesday that Hankison saw someone inside Taylor’s apartment holding an assault rifle. He called officers’ actions that night “reckless.” Three of those bullets, they say, ended up in an occupied neighboring apartment, which shares a wall with Taylor’s unit.Ĭody Etherton, one of the residents of the neighboring apartment, testified on Wednesday that one of Hankison’s bullets came within inches of hitting him. Prosecutors have alleged that Hankison blindly fired five shots through the sliding glass doors, which were covered at the time of the raid. Walker later said he thought they were intruders. Mattingly, who retired from LMPD in 2021, was shot in the leg.
Hankison was one of three officers who fired his gun during the incident in response to a single shot from Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. “I didn’t know if John was down and they couldn’t get his body out, or he was… all I could hear was the firing,” Hankison told investigators. He said he ran from Taylor’s front door after seeing the flash, went around the building and began shooting through sliding glass doors on the patio. In the recorded interview, Hankison told investigators that the figure he saw at the end of Taylor’s hallway was in a stance similar to how officers stand when they fire weapons at a shooting range. The botched raid on her home was part of a broader narcotics investigation focused on Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Vance also told the jury that investigators found no narcotics in Taylor’s apartment. What that meant was that we could search any area of that apartment legally,” he added. Vance said he was confident the crime scene had not been tampered with before investigators arrived. Vance told the jury, however, that internal police investigators never found such a gun inside the home. “The large muzzle flash looked like a large muzzle flash from a rifle.” It looked as if he or she was holding an AR-15 or a long gun, a rifle type gun,” Hankison said in that interview. “What I saw at the time was a figure in a shooting stance. In the video, Hankison could be heard saying he thought the shooter inside Taylor’s apartment had an AR-15 rifle and that fellow officers were “being executed.” Prosecutors also played a video for the jury of testimony Hankison gave to investigators on March 25, 2020, less than two weeks after Taylor’s killing. Vance, who was the lead internal investigator in this case, walked the jury through photos of Hankison that were taken after the shooting, as well as photos of his gun and other evidence collected from the scene. That unit conducts internal investigations into police shootings and misconduct allegations. Jason Vance, now a sergeant in the Louisville Metro Police Department’s Public Integrity Unit, was Thursday’s first witness.
The trial began on Wednesday and is expected to stretch into next week.
As Brett Hankison trial gets underway, Breonna Taylor’s neighbor describes almost being shot