Nov. 12 (UPI) — The former Louisville, Ky., police officer charged with endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors on the night she was shot and killed by police has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a woman in April 2018.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court alleges former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison sexually assaulted a woman after leveraging his badge and uniform to form a friendship with her.
The suit states that the woman knew Hankison through a mutual friend and that he assaulted her as she fell asleep in her bedroom after he gave her a ride home from a Louisville bar where he was working a security job.
It further states that she yelled at Hankison to get off of her after regaining consciousness and that she said Hankison later sent her a message on social media suggesting the assault was consensual.
The woman was left “physically injured, mentally horrified and remained in extreme emotional duress over both the assault and the feeling that any efforts made to hold officer Hankison accountable for his actions would backfire,” the suit states.
Lonita Baker, a lawyer representing the woman, told ABC News her client “felt that it was necessary to come forward and pursue justice and hold Brett accountable.”
The lawsuit alleges that Hankison exhibited a pattern of similar behavior targeting unsuspecting women and contains statements from other women who said Hankison offered them rides from bars he worked at before making unwanted sexual advances.
“Brett Hankison is a 44-year-old sexual predator. For years, he has used his police uniform and secondary night club employment as mechanisms to prey on innocent women who are two decades younger than him,” it states.
In September, Hankison pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment related to bullets he fired through a sliding glass door and bedroom window, some of which pierced the wall of a neighboring apartment endangering three people, including a child and a pregnant woman who lived next door, on the night Taylor was shot and killed.
The two other officers involved in the shooting, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were not indicted.
