Louisville Metro Police Department’s Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, has spoken out about the incident in his first television incident since the grand jury’s decision not to press charges against him.
“We expected that Breonna was going to be there by herself. That’s why we gave her so much time. And in my opinion that was a mistake,” Mattingly said on Good Morning America.
On September 23, Kentucky’s attorney general Daniel Cameron announced that former officer Brett Hankison Kentucky would face criminal charges for firing his gun indiscriminately into Taylor’s apartment. No other officers were charged.
An anonymous grand juror spoke out this week, stating that Cameron did not allow them to consider homicide charges or any other charges against Mattingly and officer Myles Cosgrove.
Mattingly says if he could do it all again, he’d do things differently.
“What would I have done differently, the answer to that is simple now that I’ve been thinking about it,” Mattingly said. “Number one, we would have either served the no-knock warrant or we would have done the normal thing we do, which is five to 10 seconds. To not give people time to formulate a plan, not give people time to get their senses so they have an idea of what they’re doing. Because if that had happened … Breonna Taylor would be alive, 100 percent.”
After the interview aired, the Taylor family’s attorney Lonita Baker, said Mattingly’s interview did not feel genuine.
“He’s had since March to express any sympathy to Ms. Palmer – he does not apologize to Ms. Palmer,” Baker said.
During the interview, Mattingly claimed that Taylor’s death was “not a race thing.” Baker disagrees.
“For Breonna, being a Black woman, there never would’ve been a no-knock warrant being sought on her apartment, there never would’ve been an attempt to go into her home at nearly 1 in the morning so that’s where race plays a role into this,” Baker said. “It’s not that we’re imagining these things that people are imagining these things, this is real and if he can’t understand that from the other perspective, he has no business serving as a police officer.”
