Justice For Breonna Taylor Must Include Justice For Her Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker

In August, as NewsOne reported, a federal judge, Charles R. Simpson III, stunningly ruled that the shooting death of Breonna Taylor was not the fault of the officers who falsified the search warrants that were used to justify breaking into her home and killing the Louisville EMT. In a remarkable act of injustice, he placed fault at the feet of her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who’d been sleeping beside Breonna.

Earlier this month, those officers were reindicted by federal prosecutors.

All of us should be watching how that unfolds. Here, Sadiqa Reynolds, the iconic Louisville leader, explains why.

Not one more lost

I was the President and CEO of the Louisville Urban League when Breonna was killed. My role was, in part, to ensure that the voices of my community were centralized in city matters, most specifically as they intersected with race. After seven years leading the organization, I felt I’d done as much as I could in that role. Two years after Breonna’s death, I stepped down. But I will never step down from the most defining roles in my life–a mother of daughters and a Black woman who will not pretend I don’t see racial injustice. This is why I’m writing about what’s happening to Kenneth Walker.

Like her mother, sister, and loved ones, like my Louisville community, and like many of you who read my words here, I mourn deeply for the life of Breonna Taylor. Like you, I still grieve for all her family lost. And when we’ve come together in heartbreak and determination, those of us who love justice and who loved Breonna, if we mention Kenneth Walker at all, we speak empathetically about him losing the love of his life. We speak empathetically about his future, now forever changed.

 

Judge Simpson chose to maintain the approach law enforcement began taking with Kenny in the hard, fast seconds that followed his bearing witness to the slaying of his beloved right there, at his feet. Simpson, like law enforcement, refused to treat Kenny as exactly who he is: the surviving victim of the deadly night of terror he and Breonna were subjected to in the wee hours of March 13, 2020.

We lost Breonna on that terrible night. We cannot continue to walk away from Kenneth. We cannot lose him too.

How do we begin to understand what’s been done to Kenny?

Can we even imagine what Kenny’s been put through or all that’s been taken from him?

On March 12, 2020, Kenny took Breonna to dinner. They came home and snuggled up to watch a movie, both falling asleep on the couch where they cuddled. The next thing the couple knew was that they were being awakened by the sound of intruders battering down their front door.  

Can we imagine the unbounded panic that must have coursed through their bodies? None of the officers who burst into the house wore uniforms. Why it made sense to send undercover cops in with a no-knock warrant in the pre-dawn, we may never know. But when Kenny heard the house being broken into, he fired his weapon once. By law, he had every right to do so. And there are more than a few who would argue his standing his ground was more than a right. It was a responsibility.  

Of course, Kenny didn’t stand his ground in the way that George Zimmerman claimed to have stood his when he killed Trayvon Martin. Neither Kenny nor Breonna were the aggressors. They were trapped with no place to retreat, no place to run, and no place to hide.

All the neighbors, save one who changed his story, said the police did not announce themselves. Their memories seem consistent with Kenny’s behavior because, at the very moment he could, he called 911 and pleaded for help. We would eventually all hear that recording. We’d hear the fear, the sheer dread in Kenny’s voice.

We’ve also seen the video now of the immediate aftermath. It was captured on the bodycams of the uniformed police who were waiting outside of the apartment. Some trained their weapons on Kenny; some trained snarling dogs. The video captured outside the apartment is reminiscent of slave catchers siccing dogs on runaways or, a century later, nonviolent protesters, including children, who were marching for freedom in a Jim Crow South.

No qualifier needed: a victim is a victim

Kenny was not a freedom fighter. This is not an attempt to make him into one. Most people who are victimized by the state or by an individual are not. But like them, Kenny doesn’t need to be one. We don’t need him to be an angel. We need him to be acknowledged as a man.

His dignity, humanity–and trauma–deserved to be recognized. The police and legal system have thus far refused to do so. It’s our job to challenge that–as we challenge the idea of the “perfect victim.” A person was either victimized or not. Kenny was.

Not only did he have to watch Breonna die, but he was denied the right to grieve her death. They refused to allow him to attend her funeral. He listened to it instead over the phone. He heard the cries and screams at the service while holding a receiver. Perhaps he heard the casket close. He hasn’t said. But he was not allowed to be there to comfort her mother or his own. And no one was there to comfort him. He was then and remains, an innocent man.

Breonna was the love of his life. They shot her to death and threatened to turn dogs on him. After, they not only encouraged a narrative that demonized him; they sued him. We know now that the warrant used to authorize a SWAT team to enter her home was falsified, and still, a federal court judge ruled that police were not at fault for her death. They blame Kenny– the surviving victim.

His story illustrates the brutality Black people have been subjected to by systems that work aggressively to put and keep us in our place but offer nothing to help us heal from the traumas foisted upon us. We have to address the continuous rise in police violence. In addressing it, we have to include the trauma experienced by loved ones–and those who bore direct witness. Kenny is both: a man like so many other Black people, left forever changed, having been forced to watch Breonna viciously and mercilessly extinguished under circumstances that white people survive.

Questions remain…and haunt

What happens when the government kills your girlfriend? Do you have to go in and pack your own things in the house where she lost her life, or do they send someone for you? Does the government provide mental health counseling, or do you pay out of pocket? When dogs are sicced on you, are you forever triggered by barking? Who lowers the flag for Kenny?

Kenny Walker belonged in that apartment that night. The police did not. He was not responsible for Breonna’s death. Black people have never been positioned to save those we love from those who would kill us, rape us, or torture us. I don’t know what the rest of the country remembers, but I know that many of us living in Louisville will never forget the day we first heard Kenny’s call to 911 or what it felt like to finally watch the videos that police said did not exist.

He was not her killer. He was her lover. The last smile she shared was a gift offered him. The last hug she’d give was a hug she gave him. He was her last kiss. Her last moments on Earth will forever mark a before and after for him. He has to live with that.

What does a community offer a man robbed of his dignity? How far can you push pain down, and where does it go? These are things I have wondered about since I met Kenny. These are questions that haunt me in the quiet moments I’ve spent remembering his eyes–what they look like, how they freeze and go blank, the way movies and television always depict the eyes of victims of ongoing abuse or else torture.

Darnella Frazier had those eyes. When I met the young woman who was only 17 when she filmed George Floyd’s death. There is a lifetime of trauma wrapped in witnessing the moments of watching a life end at the hands of people paid to protect it. What is it like to film a murder? Do you feel weak or strong? Do you feel anything at all? When Darnella Frazier spoke of the death threats that forced her and her mother from their home, I wondered if the government that killed George Floyd took any responsibility for her healing or at minimum, the cost of her family’s relocation.

What victim services were made available for Darnella? What victim services will ever be made available for Kenny after being wrongfully arrested, kept from Breonna’s funeral, publicly demonized, and legally harassed by the very people and system responsible for Breonna’s death?

I hope, with everything in me, that the reindictments are the beginning of justice for Kenny. Whether that happens, however, remains something the law, and even basic morality, seem increasingly unreliable to use as tools of prediction.

SEE ALSO:

Breonna Taylor’s Life Still Matters

Breonna Taylor’s Mothers Addresses New Bill That Would Finally Ban No-Knock Warrants