Breonna Taylor

A judge in Kentucky has dismissed core charges against two former Louisville police officials involved in the raid that ended in Breonna Taylor’s death.

Judge Charles R. Simpson III of western Kentucky’s U.S. District Court on Thursday said Taylor’s death was triggered by the actions of her boyfriend, who opened fire when police arrived outside her Louisville apartment March 13, 2020.

Regardless of whether former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany wrote and approved a falsified request for a warrant, it was boyfriend Kenneth Walker‘s gunfire at what he believed were intruders that caused a deadly police response, Simpson said.

Taylor, 26, was killed by officers who returned fire.

The case was already being upheld by civil rights activists as an example of police allegedly disregarding the life and rights of a Black woman when George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by officers in Minneapolis two months later, which gave Taylor’s death renewed attention.

A federal grand jury in 2022 returned indictments against Jaynes, 40, and Meany, 35, charging them with depriving Taylor of her constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures resulting in death.