Kentucky AG explains why Breonna Taylor case decision is taking so long
Kentucky officials offered new details on Friday in the investigation into the death of Breonna Taylor, a young Black medical worker who was fatally shot in Louisville, Ky., by plainclothes police officers who had entered her home.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has said little about the case since taking over the investigation in May amid ongoing protests and calls for immediate charges against the officers involved.
Taylor's death on March 13 helped ignite civil unrest across the country as people protested against racism and police brutality. Louisville police officers had executed a no-knock search warrant and used a battering ram to forcefully enter the young woman's apartment. She was not the person they were looking for, according to police.
Amid mounting pressure for a decision in the probe, Cameron reiterated his commitment to the case, but he said investigators were still gathering information.
In a statement Friday, the AG's office said it was still waiting for key evidence, specifically related to the guns and bullets involved in the shooting.
"Attorney General Cameron remains committed to an independent and thorough investigation into the death of Ms. Taylor," the office said in a statement Friday. "The investigation remains ongoing, and we currently await additional testing and analysis from federal partners, including a ballistics test from the FBI crime lab."
The FBI confirmed that it collected a "significant amount of ballistic evidence" after searching Taylor's home in June.
“As many saw on June 19th, FBI Louisville returned to Breonna Taylor's apartment to execute a federal search warrant," FBI officials told ABC News in a statement Friday. "Over two days of searching, the FBI collected a significant amount of ballistic evidence and completed a shooting reconstruction. This evidence is being tested and analyzed at the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia."
Cameron, who made history earlier this year as the state's first African American attorney general, has been under increasing pressure from civil rights protesters. Dozens of activists were arrested at his home in Louisville on July 14 because they refused to leave his yard, and last week an armed militia marched into downtown and demanded that Cameron make his decision within a month, according to The Associated Press.
Cameron has routinely refused to put a timeline on his office's decision.
Officers had executed a no-knock entry "due to the nature of how these drug traffickers operate," according to the arrest warrant obtained by ABC News.
Taylor was accused of accepting USPS packages for an ex-boyfriend whom police were investigating as an alleged drug trafficker who used her address, according to the warrant.
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, got out of bed around midnight when they heard a commotion outside. After a short exchange with police, Walker says he fired his gun in self-defense, saying he thought the home was being broken into, according to police.
The plainclothes officers returned gunfire, firing several shots and fatally hitting Taylor, police said.
Attorneys for Taylor's estate claimed that more than 20 shots were fired into her apartment, hitting her multiple times.
"I haven't had time to sit and grieve," Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, told ABC News in June. "I'm still trying to figure out why my daughter was killed. I'm still trying to figure out, why did it have to come to her being murdered. Why did Breonna have to die?"
ABC News' Luke Barr contributed to this report.
