Going Ballistic

From the very beginning, the police shooting of Breonna Taylor has been fraught with all manner of exaggeration and sensationalism. Wild tales circulated that the police had entered the wrong residence and shot Taylor as she lay asleep in her bed. No, the police were at the right address, they had a warrant, and the warrant had Taylor’s name on it because she had been in cahoots with drug dealers who were being investigated by the Louisville Metro Police Department.

As the police breached the door, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, unaware this was a police raid, fired a shot their way from his 9mm Glock pistol, striking Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly in the thigh. The police, believing they were taking fire from drug dealers, returned fire into the residence, and Taylor—up on her feet—unfortunately was caught in the crossfire.

Walker was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing because he believed the residence was being broken into by criminal home invaders against whom he had a right to defend himself. A grand jury later declined to bring charges against Sgt. Mattingly and his partner Officer Myles Cosgrove because they had every reason to believe they were being fired upon by the very drug dealers they were investigating. The grand jury did, however, bring charges against Officer Brett Hankison for wanton endangerment because he blindly fired through a patio door and a window, some of his shots penetrating into an adjacent apartment unit.

The refusal of the grand jury to bring charges against Sgt. Mattingly and Officer Cosgrove sent the frenzied masses into the streets in protest. It also prompted certain journalists to demonstrate how “woke” they were by casting aspersions on the Kentucky Attorney General’s determination that the bullet that passed through Sgt. Mattingly’s thigh was indeed fired by Walker and was not “friendly fire” from another officer. A case in point is Andrew Wolfson’s “Ballistics report doesn’t support Kentucky AG’s claim that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend shot cop.”

The 9mm bullet that went through Mattingly’s thigh and was later recovered had “limited markings of comparative value” and therefore could neither be “identified nor eliminated” as having been fired from Walker’s pistol, notes Wolfson. Now the bore of a gun has a design feature that imparts spin to the bullet, and this feature leaves the same unique markings on every bullet fired from that particular gun. In this case, however, those markings were either obscured by bullet deformation upon impact or perhaps ruined by the bullet’s contact with some other surface after passing through Mattingly’s thigh.

Wolfson then points out that although Attorney General Daniel Cameron stated that the three law enforcement officers were armed with .40 caliber pistols at the time, records indicate that Officer Hankison was also issued a 9mm sidearm as well. So hot diggity, that explains everything; it was actually Hankison who shot Mattingly! This would appear to be the simpleminded conclusion to which Wolfson is jumping to show the masses how woke he is.

But in his hurry to show how woke he is, Wolfson overlooked some pretty basic forensic procedures. Investigators document where shell casings fall and where bullets land and collect them as evidence. They chart the trajectories of bullets from where they were found to the locations from which they were fired. Hankison was sacked from the police department and later had charges brought against him for wanton endangerment because he fired blindly through a patio door and a window, some of his shots penetrating into an adjacent apartment. What caliber bullets were recovered from that adjacent apartment and what caliber shell casings were found at the location from which Hankison was firing? Were they .40 caliber or were they 9mm?

The ball is in your court, Mr. Wolfson.

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