Breonna Taylor Was Allegedly Still Alive After Cops Broke In to Her Home and Shot Her

Breonna Taylor did not immediately die after cops barged into her home and shot her without warning, according to her boyfriend’s recorded police interview.

In the audio, knowledge of which was made public Friday, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, tells investigators that the 26-year-old emergency medical technician was still alive for at least five minutes after three plainclothes cops from the Louisville Metro Police Department entered her apartment and opened fire, The Louisville Courier-Journal reports. They did so using a “no-knock” search warrant, which the Louisville Metro Council has since banned in response to mounting activist pressure.

“[Police are] yelling like, ‘Come out, come out,’ and I’m on the phone with her [mom],” Walker told authorities. “I’m still yelling ‘Help!’ because she’s over here coughing, and, like, I’m just freaking out.”

The three plainclothes officers—Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove—made no effort to save Taylor’s life, records show. Records also show that Taylor’s body lay in her hallway for 20 minutes and that she received no medical attention from authorities. Hankison and Cosgrove apparently wasted no time taking Mattingly to the hospital, however, after Walker shot him thinking that the three non-uniformed men were intruders, the Courier-Journal notes.

“Breonna, who was unarmed in her hallway, was struck by several rounds of gunfire,” reads the lawsuit filed on behalf of Taylor’s family. “She was not killed immediately.”

“Rather, she lived for another five to six minutes before ultimately succumbing to her injuries on the floor of her home,” the suit continues, per the Courier-Journal.

Black Lives Matter activists have frequently invoked Taylor’s name over the past two months in order to protest police violence against Black people in the United States, as well as to call attention to the ongoing erasure of victims of such violence who are not cis, straight men.

Still, justice for Taylor has been slow to come, it not nearly nonexistent.

Louisville Metro fired Hankison on June 23. Neither he nor the other two cops have been charged in connection to Taylor’s death at press time.

Over 100 protesters marched through Louisville on Tuesday, The New York Times reports, demanding that Kentucky Atty. Gen. Daniel Cameron charge the three men. The peaceful demonstration ended on Cameron’s front lawn, where 87 were arrested, including Real Housewives of Atlanta castmember Porsha Williams and NAACP Minneapolis chapter president Leslie Redmond.

Prosecutors dropped felony charges against those protests on Friday, the Times says.