As the nation remembers her birthday, Breonna Taylor's family grieves a life 'robbed'
Article by NPR // Black Lives Matter // Justice for Breonna Taylor
Before she was a hashtag or a headline, before protesters around the country chanted her name, Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old woman who played cards with her aunts and fell asleep watching movies with friends.
That changed on March 13, when police officers executing a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night killed her in her apartment in Louisville, Ky.
Now, as protesters around the country have taken up her name in their call for racial justice and an end to police violence, Taylor's friends and family remember the woman they knew and loved: someone who cared for others and loved singing, playing games, cooking and checking up on friends.
Before the early-morning raid in March, Taylor was a first responder who loved to sneak in a nap before her next shift. She would have turned 27 on Friday.
Breonna Taylor, pictured in December, would have turned 27 on Friday, June 5. Her friends and family remember Taylor as a caring person who loved her job in health care and enjoyed playing cards with her aunts. (Credit: Taylor Family)
Known as "Bre" to her friends and family, Taylor moved from Michigan to Louisville when she was a teenager. Much of her large, tightknit, extended family moved around the same time.
One aunt, Bianca Austin, called Taylor her "mini me." An uncle, Tyrone Bell, called her "Breezy."
"She was cool, a cool cat," says another aunt, Tahasha Holloway.
The family regularly spent time together, and Taylor often proposed a round of her favorite card games, Phase 10 and Skip-Bo.
While sorting through Taylor's belongings, Erinicka Hunter came across this scrapbook page made by Taylor when the two friends were seniors in high school. (Credit: Becky Sullivan/NPR )
The work schedule of an EMT could be grueling; it was especially so in early March as worries about the coronavirus spread.
But those who knew her say Taylor welcomed the opportunity to give back and to make a difference in someone's life.
Friends and family agree that Taylor was attracted to a career in health care because she cared about people. In a Facebook post Taylor made as her uncle recovered from a stroke last year, she wrote:
Working in health care is so rewarding. It makes me feel so happy when I know I've made a difference in someone else's life. I'm so appreciative of all the staff that has helped my uncle throughout this difficult time and those that will continue to make a difference in his life.
She attended Western High School in Louisville, where she met and befriended Erinicka Hunter and Shatanis Vaughn — they were, in their words, "the three amigos."
Like many 20-somethings, Hunter and Taylor drifted apart at times after high school. But Hunter remembers rekindling their friendship last year after she underwent brain surgery. She was recovering in the hospital when Taylor came to visit.
"I'm like, 'Why did we fall out? I don't understand.' And she was like, 'It doesn't matter, Nick. We together again. Don't worry about that. I love you. Just know that,' " Hunter remembers. "It's not right. We was robbed."
Taylor's death in March came as a shock to those who knew her.
She and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were at home in her apartment when a team of plainclothes Louisville police officers arrived to execute a no-knock warrant early March 13. According to her family's lawyers, the subject of the investigation was not Taylor, but a man she had dated previously who had once sent a package to her apartment.
When police broke into the apartment, Walker thought they were being robbed, Taylor's lawyers say. A licensed gun owner, he grabbed his weapon and shot an officer in the leg. The officers returned fire, shooting dozens of times, killing Taylor, according to a wrongful death lawsuit by the family. Police arrested Walker, and he was charged with attempted murder of a police officer. Those charges have since been dropped.
Now, two months later, most of the nation knows Taylor's story. Thousands of protesters across the country demonstrating against police violence chant her name along with George Floyd's. In Louisville, Taylor takes center stage literally – with a mural of her smiling face drawn in chalk in downtown's Jefferson Square Park.
