The FBI has opened an investigation into the March shooting of Kentucky EMT worker Breonna Taylor, the agency said on Thursday. “The FBI will collect all available facts and evidence and will ensure that the investigation is conducted in a fair, thorough, and impartial manner,” they said in a statement on Twitter.
Taylor, a 26-year-old who worked for two hospitals, was asleep when she was shot eight times in her home on March 13 during a raid. The Louisville Metro Police Department had executed several “no-knock” search warrants looking for a suspected drug dealer who lived in a different part of town. The news of the investigation came just after Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad said Thursday he plans to retire in June amid national outrage over the Taylor case. “It has been the highlight of my professional career to be Louisville’s police chief,” Conrad said in a statement obtained by The Daily Beast. “There have been a lot of ups and downs in this job – there always are in police work.”
According to police records, the “no-knock” search warrant was granted by a judge. The department said plainclothes officers announced themselves and returned gunfire when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them. A lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family, however, asserts that police scared Taylor’s boyfriend, who believed they were being burglarized, and he responded in self-defense. An internal investigation by LMPD was turned over to the state attorney general’s office on Wednesday. “We will not rest until everyone involved is held accountable and we get Justice for Bre!,” Ben Crump, the attorney for Taylor's family, said in a statement.
