Officer shot in Breonna Taylor raid reacts to federal charges
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - The officer who was shot by Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend during the raid at her apartment said he expected the FBI to make a move.
John Mattingly heard the news about the arrests of four LMPD officers, Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Hanna Goodlett, Bret Hankison and Kyle Meany early Thursday morning.
“They continued to investigate this, continued to interview people and hold grand juries,” Mattingly told WAVE News Troubleshooters. “I knew somebody was going to be the fall guy for this stuff. I just didn’t know who.”
Mattingly was not part of the group of officers involved in the investigation. He had volunteered that night to work the raids.
>>FULL COVERAGE: The Breonna Taylor Case
He was shot in the femoral artery seconds after Taylor’s door was breached. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot almost immediately.
Walker has claimed he didn’t know it was police, but rather an intruder. That’s been contradicted by Mattingly and the officers at the raid, who claimed they knocked and announced for several minutes before using their ram to open the door.
Mattingly pointed to an internal affairs interview with an LMPD officer, who was friends with Kenneth Walker. The officer stated that at the scene, Walker’s mom told him about the conversation she had with her son moments before the shooting.
“She said ‘Baby, who’s at the door? He said the police, I don’t know what they want,’” officer Donavan Duncan told investigators.
Mattingly believes there are things the FBI did not investigate, like the death threats against himself, his family and the other officers.
He also fired against Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, whom he believes was behind the reason for the investigation into Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, in order to re-develop his neighborhood.
“He put the pressure on them weekly with his representatives coming to our office, with the command staff coming to our office, pushing them on when are we doing this, where are we at on this case,” Mattingly said. “And these younger detectives who just didn’t have the experience were put into a position where they felt the pressure to get something done, and I think that played a part in it.”
Fischer has denied such a claim.
“It’s political, you know, this is the age we live in where everything is painted black and white, unfortunately instead of seeing each other as humans,” he continued. “And any time there’s a white officer and a Black subject, it’s going to be pushed as a race narrative when it’s not most of the time. Now, there are cases where that happens, but this was not one of them.”
Mattingly added that LMPD was already in bad shape with low morale since well before the death of Breonna Taylor and the riots that followed.
WAVE News Troubleshooters investigated the fact that hundreds of officers have already quit.
Mattingly said the department being in such a bad shape will have a terrible effect on the entire city.
“Our crime rate has sky-rocketed, people don’t feel safe, they don’t want to go downtown, and if you have that kind of reputation, people aren’t going to come,” Mattingly said. “I know conferences that have canceled and said, no, we’re not going to Louisville,” he said. “The citizens suffer crime wise but they also financially, the city is not bringing in the revenue because who wants to come to a city where you can get car-jacked or shot?”
Mattingly added he hopes the current LMPD officers will keep their heads up and continue to serve their community.
Copyright 2022 WAVE. All rights reserved.
