It’s been nearly three months since Breonna Taylor was fatally shot by three police officers during a botched no-knock search-warrant attempt on March 13. Now, sexual assault allegations by two women against one of the officers involved in Taylor’s death have surfaced.
People reports that on June 4, two women posted to social media about their experiences with Officer Brett Hankison. Both women claim their assaults began after they accepted Hankison’s offer to give them a ride home.
A woman identified on Facebook as Margo Borders claimed that in April 2018 she “went out to a bar with some friends” and when she got ready to leave and started to call an Uber home, Hankison offered her a ride which she was comfortable accepting since he was someone she “had interacted with on many occasions at bars in St. Matthews.”
“He drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious,” she wrote. “I never reported him out of fear of retaliation. I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer. Who do you call when the person who assaulted you is a police officer? Who were they going to believe? I knew it wouldn’t be me. “
The second woman told a similar story except she allegedly didn’t make it out of Hankison’s car before inappropriate contact began. A woman identified as Emily Terry posted her allegations on Instagram the same day Borders posted hers to Facebook.
“In early fall, I began walking home from a bar intoxicated,” Terry wrote. “A police officer pulled up next to me and offered me a ride home. I thought to myself, ‘Wow. That is so nice of him.’ And willingly got in. He began making sexual advances towards me; rubbing my thigh, kissing my forehead, and calling me ‘baby’. Mortified, I did not move.”
Terry said that once they pulled up to her home, she got out of the car and “ran to the back” of her apartment building. She said her friend reported what happened to her the next day but “nothing came from it.”
Both women noted that Hankison is one of the officers involved in Taylor’s death and said he has a history of “corrupt behavior,” including allegations of planting drugs on suspects in addition to multiple sexual assault allegations.
Apparently, they are referring to the case of Kendrick Wilson, who filed a federal lawsuit against Hankison in October 2019 alleging that Hankison repeatedly harassed him and planted evidence on him because he thought Wilson “for one reason or another, had to be engaging in illegal activity, and that he had to ensure his conviction,” according to the Courier-Journal.
From the Courier-Journal:
Wilson’s suit outlines three times in which Hankison arrested Wilson in 2016 and 2018, all of which originated at bars where Hankison sometimes worked as off-duty security.
It also says that Wilson and Hankison have had various interactions outside of the arrests, “including over a relationship with the same woman.”
The first arrest was in 2016 at the Tin Roof bar, when Hankinson arrested Wilson for assault. The charges were dismissed in November.
The citation said Hankison recovered a plastic bag of suspected powder cocaine on the ground and arrested Wilson.
But the lawsuit, citing body camera footage, said Hankison located the bag “on the sidewalk several feet away from where the altercation took place.”
“He then jokes with other LMPD officers about ‘planting dope’ when Mr. Wilson expressed shock over the locating of these drugs,” the suit says.
“Also visible on the body camera is an unnamed civilian, who can be heard communicating with Mr. Wilson that he saw an officer drop the drugs on the sidewalk before he retrieved them,” the suit says.
The next month, Hankison arrested Wilson a third time, this time at Sullivan’s Tap House.
Hankison wrote on the arrest citation that he located a “large bag of powder cocaine” that weighed “an excess of 5 grams” on Wilson.
A civilian video taken of the incident showed Hankison “taunting” Wilson’s girlfriend and telling her that “he was planting ‘dope’ again,” according to the suit.
The charges were dropped two months later.
Wilson’s criminal case from his first arrest is still pending. Hankison denies all of Wilson’s allegations. Hankison, along with Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove, was placed on administrative reassignment after the Taylor shooting and the investigation into her death is still ongoing. To date, none of the officers have been criminally charged in Taylor’s death.
As for the sexual assault claims, a spokesperson for the Louisville Metro Police Department told People via email, “We encourage anyone with direct information about this situation to contact us and share that information with an investigator at (502) 574-7144.”