OPRAH VIDEO ON BREONNA TAYLOR BILLBOARDS - COURTESY OPRAH MAGAZINE ON TWITTER 8-11-2020 (1).jpeg

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Oprah Winfrey explains why she's buying space on billboards in Louisville and putting Breonna Taylor's face on them.

The media mogul narrated a video on social media marking 150 days since Taylor was killed saying that paying for those billboards is her "form of protest." Winfrey says that she would be in the streets marching with Black Lives Matter protesters, if the coronavirus weren't a factor.

Taylor, an emergency medical tech, was shot multiple times March 13 when Louisville Metro Police officers served a no-knock warrant on her south Louisville apartment during a narcotics investigation. The warrant to search her home was in connection with a suspect who did not live there and no drugs were found. Her death has sparked months of protests around the country calling for charges against the three officers involved in the shooting.

In the posted video, Winfrey talks about the last time she spoke to Taylor's mother and about the drug raid where Taylor was shot and killed in March.

Here is the text of her statement:

"The last time I talked to Breonna Taylor's mom, Takema Palmer, she was having a particularly bad day dealing with the loss of her daughter. She told me, 'I can't stop seeing her face, her smile. It's what I miss most about her. I'm still waiting for her to come through the door.'

Everybody who's lost a loved one knows that feeling. For every mother and father that is out in the world right now, imagine getting a phone call in the middle of the night that your daughter has been shot in the middle of the night in her apartment, and then you find out that the people who killed her were police officers, who should never have been there in the first place. What would you want to happen now?

Would you be content to hear five months later there's an investigation and that no one has been held accountable for shooting your innocent daughter multiple times and letting her life bleed out?

If not for the coronavirus, I would be out in these streets marching with the Black Lives Matter protesters. These 26 billboards -- one for every year of Breonna's life -- are my offering, my form of protest. We cannot be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice."

Winfrey made the decision to put Breonna Taylor on the cover of O magazine's September issue, which went on sale Tuesday. It's the first time anyone other than Winfrey has been on the cover. In the magazine, Oprah and her staff ask people to donate to national social justice group, Until Freedom, which moved its operations to Louisville over the weekend.

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