LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A year after Breonna Taylor's death, her mother is still trying to find ways to get through the grief.
In a one-on-one interview this week with WDRB News, Tamika Palmer shared how she is getting through some of the hardest days of her life. She said protests on the streets of Louisville and across the nation have been a wakeup call and reminder that people care.
"Some days, it gets you out of bed," Palmer said. "Even when you don't want to get up, it's these people who don't know her and never met her, but they're up and they're saying her name and they're fighting for her and they're demanding justice. So how do you not get up?
"But then, some days, every day is March 13."
On March 13, 2020, Louisville Metro Police officers with a no-knock search warrant busted into Taylor's apartment. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he thought they were intruders and fired a single shot, hitting Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg. Police returned fire, killing Taylor.
"I haven't dealt with (LMPD) since the night that this occurred," Palmer said.
Palmer said it took police nearly 12 hours to talk to her after the shooting, and the detective had plenty of questions but no answers.
"He asked me if Breonna and Kenny had been having any problems and I'm like, 'What are you saying? ... Like, where's Kenny? He won't answer me. Like, let me talk to Kenny,'" Palmer said. "And so, he says, 'We got Kenny at one of our offices trying to help us piece together what happened here tonight.'"
RELATED: Breonna Taylor's mother says she's still waiting for answers from police
And Palmer said she never got answers from LMPD.
"When I left, I still didn't know what had happened to her," she said.
Palmer said what little she did learn came from local news reports.
"That's when I found out that the police had killed her," she said.
After the raid, Walker was arrested and charged with attempted murder, but the charge was eventually dropped.
Tamika Palmer, Breonna Taylor's mother, speaks with WDRB News.
"I talk to Kenny every day," Palmer said. "I mean, he's still family. My heart breaks for him."
Walker was the last person to see Taylor alive and the first person to break the news to Palmer.
"Without him, I don't know when we would have found out anything about Breonna," she siad.
Now, it seems everyone knows her name, but that wasn't the case right after her death.
"We had been posting stuff diligently about Breonna and what happened," Palmer said.
It took another man's death, which occurred two months later and hundreds of miles away, to bring attention to Taylor's case. It was the case of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer handcuffed him and kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
"Everybody watched what happened to George, and so now everybody was in a rage and just upset," Palmer said. "So it was this day that, all of a sudden, people read this story or read one of our posts and it just, it spread like wildfire."
This week, jury selection started in the trial of the former officer charged with Floyd's death, Derek Chauvin, and Palmer has been there for his family.
"I've been texting his brother Philonise and just kind of, just being support for them," she said.
It is a tragic bond, one that connects Palmer to other grieving families. That includes the mother of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed last February while jogging in Georgia. Last summer, Arbery's mother was in Louisville and attended a protest at the home of Attorney General Daniel Cameron, but that was not her only stop.
"I didn't know she was coming," Palmer said. "I did connect with her; she definitely came to see me, and we hugged and cried."
Palmer said her family and support group are strong, but the bond she shares with the families of Floyd and Arbery is different.
"Until it has happened to you, you don't really understand," she said.
When asked what she wants next in her daughter's case, Palmer simply said, "accountability."
"I want to see these officers charged, prosecuted," she said.
In the last 12 months, several officers involved in the raid have been fired. The city has banned no-knock warrants and paid Taylor's estate $12 million.
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