In an interview with CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King, Kenneth Walker described the moments after his girlfriend, Breonna Taylor, was shot to death by police on March 13.
#EXCLUSIVE: Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker talks to @GayleKing about the night police raided her home as part of a narcotics investigation into Breonna's ex-boyfriend. Neither Walker nor Taylor has a criminal history and no illegal drugs were found in the home. pic.twitter.com/4qvYpMjieG
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) October 14, 2020
During the interview, Walker reveals how he learned of his girlfriend's death. He says the police never told him that Taylor had been pronounced dead and instead had learned of the news while sitting in jail watching the local newscast.
"I never really got told directly. I saw it on the news," Walker said. "I was in the cell and it was on the news and it said, "One female dead" they confirmed it. I didn't know what condition she was in when I left."
Walker went on to explain what other witnesses in the apartment complex have repeatedly said, that police never identified themselves before breaking down Taylor's door and unleashing a hail of gunfire.
Walker said he and Taylor spent the night playing Uno and watching a movie after going on a date. But they were awakened by loud banging on the door. Both quickly dressed and asked who it was, but they got no answer, Walker said. Within seconds, their door flew off the hinges and Walker fired a warning shot hoping to scare off what he thought were intruders.
"Nobody was responding, and we were saying 'Who is it?' You know. I'm a million percent sure that nobody identified themselves. If they had knocked on the door and said who it was, we could hear them. It was dead silent," Walker said.
Walker's harrowing story sheds even more light on how police conducted themselves after shooting Taylor and reinforces many of the complaints legal experts have expressed about how Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron handled the grand jury trial.
Last month, Cameron announced that no charges would be filed against either of the officers who shot Taylor, as Blavity previously reported. Police were justified in shooting Taylor, he said during a press conference, because Walker had fired a warning shot after police allegedly identified themselves.
"If it was the police at the door and they just said, 'We're the police,' me or Breonna didn't have a reason at all not to open the door to see what they wanted," Walker told King, adding that he had never heard so many gunshots at the same time.
Three police officers, Sgt. Jon Mattingly, ex-detective Brett Hankison and detective Myles Cosgrove, fired 32 shots randomly into the apartment, hitting Taylor at least six times.
"I pulled her down to the ground. But, you know, she was scared so she just didn't get down," he said.
Walker said he was holding Taylor in his arms when he called his mother, 911 and Taylor's mother.
As King notes in the interview, Walker's story has never changed since that night, and recordings of his 911 call back up his assertion that police never identified themselves. On the frantic 911 call that was released, Walker is distraught and confused, telling the operators that someone had broken into their home and shot Taylor.
In one of the most jaw-dropping portions of the interview, Walker says that when he eventually heard the police outside, he thought they were there to render aid to Taylor.
"I thought they was, you know, coming for help. 'Cause I called 911," he said.
Instead, the officers outside intimidated him with dogs, pointed their guns at him and said it was unfortunate that he was not struck with gunfire.
"I didn't know what to think, and I really wasn't worried about me. Only reason I'm even out here is because only way for her to get help in there is for me to be out here," Walker said.
He was arrested, but very quickly, he said he realized something was off about how the police were acting. After handcuffing him and putting him in a police car, they began to drive away, only to stop in an abandoned parking lot on the way.
Bodycam footage shared by CBS show an officer in the parking lot, calling the raid a miscommunication. Walker became even more suspicious when he was allowed to walk freely around the police station without being handcuffed.
"You don't allegedly shoot a police officer… and they take the handcuffs off," he said.
In another section of the two-part interview, Walker says he is in therapy and that while he is glad Taylor's name has become a symbol for injustice, nothing can be done to replace the life they were planning to build together. They had already picked out baby names, had plans to get married and even bought shoes for a potential baby.
"You probably wouldn't even know about it. If I didn't live, you probably wouldn't even know about Breonna Taylor. She would have done anything for anybody. She took care of a lot of people," he said. "So a lot of people, they need her bad right now, including me," he told King.
"To the world she's just a hashtag, a picture, and all of that. But to me it was much more. More than a girlfriend too. I think that's what I want the world to know the most. That was my best friend… The most important person pretty much to me on Earth. And they took her," he added.