A POLICE OFFICER who was involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor is set to be fired from his job, the mayor of the US town in which the incident occurred has said.
Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician worker, was killed after police entered her apartment while she and her boyfriend were asleep on March 13, her lawyer Ben Crump said.
Officers had the wrong address and used a battering ram to enter the Lousiville, Kentucky apartment without warning and were searching for a suspect who was already in custody, the lawyer said.
Taylor was shot eight times in the incident.
The Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, said today that termination procedures are being initiated against Brett Hankison, one of three police officers who entered her apartment that night.
“Unfortunately, due to a provision in state law that I very much would like to see changed, both the Chief and I are precluded from talking about what brought us to this moment, or even the timing of this decision,” the mayor said.
Protests have been ongoing in the US and around the world over the deaths of black people at the hands of police.
The death last month of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, spurred on a resurgence in Black Lives Matter protests and demands for deep changes in law enforcement.
George Floyd died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Earlier this week, singer Beyonce made an appeal for justice in the case of Breonna Taylor.
In an open letter, the singer drew attention to the fact that all the police involved in the March 13 shooting remained on the Louisville, Kentucky force at that time.
“Three months have passed – and zero arrests have been made, and no officers have been fired,” she wrote to the state’s attorney general, Daniel Cameron.
The initiation of the firing of one of the police officers involved was announced today.
- With reporting by AFP
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