LOUISIVLLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville Metro Police officer will testify he was "shocked" by former Det. Brett Hankison blindly firing 10 shots into Breonna Taylor's home and a neighboring apartment during the botched March 13, 2020, raid that lead to her death, according to the prosecution.

The officer, Chris Kitchen, said it was the "worst thing he has seen in his 20 years in law enforcement," a federal prosecutor told a jury during opening arguments in Hankinson's trial on civil rights charges Thursday. Hankison was "bouncing and pumping his fist with excitement," pointing at his chest after the shooting, prosecutor Anna Mary Gotfryd told jurors.

"That's the image that makes Officer Kitchen sick to this day," she said in her opening statements. 

In addition, an officer involved in the raid, Myles Cosgrove, who himself fired 16 shots that night, will testify that what Hankison did was "unbelievably dangerous," according to Gotfryd. 

Hankison fired five shots into Taylor's living room from outside through blinded windows, according to the prosecution. He fired five more shots through a bedroom window that was covered by curtains.

"He couldn't see anything through those windows," Gotfryd told jurors on the first day of testimony in the trial. 

Three of the bullets flew into an adjacent apartment where Cody Etherton, Chelsey Napper and her 5-year-old child lived.

"An officer can never, ever fire blindly," Gotfryd said. "If you can't see it, you can't shoot it. Officers can't guess. They can't shoot at where they think a suspect might be."

But defense attorney Jack Byrd said other officers will testify that they could see light coming through the windows and there is video footage to back up that testimony.

And no police officer or expert witness knows what Hankinson could see that night, he said.

"They didn't see what Brett Hankison saw," Byrd told jurors. "They did not perceive what he perceived. ... Until you've been in that position, you don't know what it's like. You don't know how you would react."

After three full days of jury selection, the 16-person jury was seated Thursday morning. The four alternates will be chosen at the end of the trial. The trial is expected to last about three weeks. 

The charges stem from the botched raid of Taylor's home in the middle of the night in which police officers busted down her door to serve a search warrant related to a drug dealer who lived 10 miles away.

When police burst in, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot that hit former Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg. Walker has said he believed the couple were being robbed.

Multiple LMPD officers returned fire, killing Taylor, 26. No drugs were found in her home.

"Things went very wrong," Gotfryd said. 

Hankison, 47, was indicted in August 2022 on two charges of deprivation of rights for firing into a bedroom window in Taylor's apartment that was covered with blinds and a blackout curtain after "there was no longer a lawful objective justifying the use of deadly force," according to the indictment.

BREONNA TAYLOR LMPD Shooting

If convicted, Hankison faces a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.

Following the initial burst of shots, Gotfryd said Hankison continued firing after Taylor was already killed and no one else was shooting.

The shots were "completely against police training," she said. "He didn't fire just once, he fired 10 times.

Byrd disputed the prosecution's version of events, saying, for example, the curtains have gaps in them and that Hankison was not the last officer to fire shots that night. And he said Hankison wasn't one of the officers involved in preparing for or planning the raids. 

"It is tragedy that Ms. Taylor was killed but what you are going to find out, that the truth, is Brett Hankison didn't have anything to do with the preparation of those warrants"  signed off on by a judge, he said. "He was an officer there trying to get some overtime with his K-9. He was there to assist."

Byrd also told jurors that Hankison believed he heard automatic rifle fire coming from inside the home and saw a muzzle flash when Mattingly was shot. 

Hankison fired "to protect his fellow officers" who he believed "were being executed in that hallway," Bryd told jurors.  

Also on Thursday, Napper testified she had to check to see if her child was still alive and covered the infant with her body after bullets "went flying through the wall," one just feet away from where the infant was sleeping 

She told jurors she was "baffled" by the incident and how police could not have come up with a better plan that would have avoided shooting multiple times into her home. In the years since the shooting, Napper said she and her child have been diagnosed with PTSD. 

Napper, who was seven-months pregnant at the time, also testified she heard someone yelling for help after the shooting. 

"It sounded devastating," she said. "They were just crying for help, desperately." 

The second witness in the trial, Sgt. Michael Campbell, who participated in the raid, testified he didn't understand why Hankison, a 17-year veteran of LMPD, fired shots from where he was located.

"I don’t know the reason why," he said. "I can’t come up with a reason why anyone would." 

Campbell testified he could not see through the window from his vantage point and decided not to fire his weapon. 

Hankison's trial was originally supposed to start in August, but was delayed until October to allow the defense to go over a large amount of evidence turned in by prosecutors.

In a similar case, a jury in a state criminal case found Hankison not guilty in March 2022 on three counts of wanton endangerment stemming from the Taylor raid. 

During his testimony in that trial, Hankison repeatedly choked up while describing the events of the night Taylor was killed but stood firm that he did nothing wrong.

“Absolutely not,” he told the jury, saying he "clearly identified an active threat" and was “protecting” fellow officers.

Hankison described the entire incident as a tragedy and said Taylor “didn’t need to die that night.”

Three other former officers have also been federally charged for their involvement in the Taylor case: Kyle Meany, Kelly Goodlett and Joshua Jaynes.

The charges resulted from a federal investigation that, in part, looked at how police obtained the search warrant for Taylor's apartment, something a prior state investigation by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's office did not pursue. Cameron has said that aspect was part of the U.S. Justice Department's work.

Jaynes and Meany are accused of drafting and approving "what they knew was a false affidavit to support a search warrant for Ms. Taylor's home," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke has said. "That false affidavit set in motion events that led to Ms. Taylor's death when other LMPD officers executed that warrant."

Goodlett has already pleaded guilty in federal court to felony conspiracy for helping to falsify the affidavit and then conspiring with Jaynes to cover it up. She is expected to testify against Jaynes and Meaney. 

Taylor was inside the apartment with Walker when police burst in early in the morning on March 13, 2020.

Police were looking for money or drugs involving Jamarcus Glover, who was at the center of a narcotics probe by Louisville police. The warrant for Taylor's home was executed around the same time that police served other warrants on suspected drug houses in the city's west end — some 10 miles away.

LMPD has claimed that while Jaynes obtained a "no-knock" warrant, police repeatedly knocked on Taylor's door and announced themselves before knocking it in.

Byrd told jurors officers and other witnesses will testify that officers knocked before going in.

Walker has said he never heard police announce themselves and believed the couple was being robbed. He fired a shot, hitting former officer John Mattingly in the leg.

Police responded with 32 shots, hitting Taylor six times. The 26-year-old died at the scene.

The former detectives who fired the shots that struck Taylor — Mattingly and Cosgrove — have not been charged.

Mattingly retired and Cosgrove was fired for failing to properly “identify a target,” violating the department’s use of force policy and failing to use a body camera.

Investigators say Cosgrove fired the fatal shot killing Taylor. 

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