When Louisville Kentucky Police Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly helped break down the front door of 26-year-old Black medic Breonna Taylor’s apartment after midnight on March 13, Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, a licensed gun owner, thought intruders had broken into her home and he began firing.
As police returned gunfire, killing Taylor, one of Walker’s bullets hit Mattingly in the leg, injuring him. Now Mattingly is suing Walker for “severe trauma, mental anguish, and emotional distress.”
Keep in mind, Walker was initially charged with attempted murder for shooting at police, but those charges were later dropped.
While Mattingly’s lawsuit says “Walker’s conduct in shooting Mattingly is outrageous, intolerable, and offends all accepted standards of decency and morality,” Walker’s lawyer, Steve Romines, told CBS News that “Walker is protected by law … and is immune from both criminal prosecution and civil liability as he was acting in self defense in his own home.”
“Even the most basic understanding of Kentucky’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and the ‘Castle Doctrine’ evidences this fact. One would think that breaking into the apartment, executing his girlfriend and framing him for a crime in an effort to cover up her murder would be enough for them,” Romines continued. “Yet this baseless attempt to further victimize and harass Kenny indicates otherwise.”