Breonna Taylor's ex offered plea deal in drug case to name her as part of organized crime syndicate: Family
The attorney for the family of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by police officers as she was sleeping in her home, has revealed that authorities offered a plea deal to her ex-boyfriend arrested on drug trafficking charges to name her as a part of his "organized crime syndicate" in exchange for a lesser punishment.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was killed on March 13 after Louisville Metro Police officers Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officers Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove arrived at her home at 1 am with a no-knock warrant, broke down her door, and fatally shot her.
The officers had arrived at her residence as part of a narcotics investigation that was linked to her on-again, off-again boyfriend Jamarcus Glover. While she was not a suspect in the case, both her name and address were on the warrant because of her association with Glover, who had been spotted at her home two months earlier. He had also used Taylor's vehicle to visit suspected drug houses, had listed her apartment as his address, and was spotted on surveillance leaving her home with a package as recently as January.
With Mattingly, Hankison, and Cosgrove now the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit from Taylor's family, a civil lawsuit from Taylor's neighbors, as well as investigations being conducted by Louisville Metro Police's Public Integrity Unit and the FBI, it has emerged that law enforcement had tried to implicate the 26-year-old to drug offenses via Glover.
Glover was arrested in a drug raid the same night Taylor was killed, and again last week on new drug charges and was reportedly offered a plea deal from the Jefferson Commonwealth Attorney's office where he would have to admit he and his co-defendants, including Taylor, trafficked drugs into the Louisville community. In return, he would potentially be freed on probation for criminal syndication, drug trafficking, and gun charges. Glover refused the deal, and on recorded jail phone calls, has repeatedly insisted that she had nothing to do with any drug operations.
Sam Aguiar, the attorney representing Taylor's family in the wrongful death lawsuit, has now slammed the authorities and accused them of trying to tarnish Taylor's name. "The fact that they would try to even represent that she was a co-defendant in a criminal case more than a month after she died is absolutely disgusting," he said.
In a Facebook post, Aguiar suggested that the plea deal was being used to justify the search of her home and her killing. "Breonna Taylor is not a 'co-defendant' in a criminal case," he wrote. "Way to try and attack a woman when she's not even here to defend herself." The attorney also highlighted how the plea deal, which was offered to Glover on July 13, identified Taylor as a 'co-defendant' for actions related to arrests on April 22, 2020, by which point she had already been dead for a month.
In response, Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine said the offer that included Taylor was a "draft" and part of negotiations with Glover and his lawyer. "When I was advised of the discussions, out of respect for Ms. Taylor, I directed that Ms. Breonna Taylor’s name be removed. The final plea sheet provided to Mr. Glover’s counsel is attached and clearly does not include Ms. Taylor as a co-defendant," he told WDRB.