LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A former Louisville police officer accused of acting recklessly when he fired shots into Breonna Taylor’s windows the night of the deadly 2020 police raid is going on trial for a third time.
Federal prosecutors will try again to convict Brett Hankison of civil rights violations after their first effort ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury a year ago. Hankison was also acquitted of wanton endangerment charges for firing 10 shots into Taylor's apartment at a state trial in 2022.
Jury selection in U.S. District Court in Louisville began Tuesday. In last year’s trial, the process took most of three days.
Hankison is the only officer who has faced a jury trial so far in Taylor’s death, which sparked months of street protests for the fatal shooting of the 26-year-old Black woman by white officers, drawing national attention to police brutality incidents in the summer of 2020. Though he was not one of the officers who shot Taylor, federal prosecutors say Hankison’s actions put Taylor and her boyfriend and her neighbors in danger.
On the night of the raid, Louisville officers went to Taylor’s house to serve a drug warrant, which was later found to be flawed. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing an intruder was barging in, fired a single shot that hit one of the officers, and officers returned fire, striking Taylor in her hallway multiple times.
As those shots were being fired, Hankison, who was behind a group of officers at the door, ran to the side of the apartment and fired into Taylor’s windows, later saying he thought he saw a figure with a rifle and heard assault rifle rounds being fired.
“I had to react,” Hankison testified in last year’s federal trial. “I had no choice.”
Some of the shots went through Taylor’s apartment and into another unit where a couple and a child lived. Those neighbors have testified at Hankison’s previous trials.
Police were looking for drugs and cash in Taylor’s apartment, but they found neither.
At the conclusion of testimony in Hankison’s trial last year, the 12-member jury struggled for days to reach a consensus. Jurors eventually told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings they were deadlocked and could not come to a decision — prompting Jennings’ declaration of a mistrial.
The judge said there were “elevated voices” coming from the jury room at times during deliberations, and court security officials had to visit the room. Jennings said the jury had “a disagreement that they cannot get past.”
Hankison was one of four officers who were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. The two counts against him carry a maximum penalty of life in prison if he is convicted.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Taylor “should be alive today” when he announced the federal charges in August 2022.
But those charges so far have yielded just one conviction — a plea deal from a former Louisville officer who was not at the raid and became a cooperating witness — while felony civil rights charges against two officers accused of falsifying information in the warrant used to enter Taylor’s apartment were thrown out by a judge last month.
In that ruling, a federal judge in Louisville wrote that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who fired a shot at police, were the legal cause of her death, not a bad warrant. The ruling effectively reduced the civil rights violation charges against former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, which had carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors. They still face other lesser federal charges, and prosecutors have since indicted Jaynes and Meany on additional charges.
FILE - A ground mural depicting a portrait of Breonna Taylor is seen at Chambers Park in Annapolis, Md., July 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
FILE - Former Louisville Police officer Brett Hankison is questioned by his defense attorney Wednesday, March 2, 2022, in Louisville, Ky.. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, Pool, File)
RHO, Italy (AP) — No ice is colder and harder than speedskating ice. The precision it takes has meant that Olympic speedskaters have never competed for gold on a temporary indoor rink – until the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.
In the pursuit of maximum glide and minimum friction, Olympic officials brought on ice master Mark Messer, a veteran of six previous Olympic speedskating tracks and the ice technician in charge of the Olympic Oval in Calgary, Canada — one of the fastest tracks in the world with over 300 records.
Messer has been putting that experience to work one thin layer of ice at a time since the end of October at the new Speed Skating Stadium, built inside adjacent trade fair halls in the city of Rho just north of Milan.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in icemaking,’’ Messer said during an interview less than two weeks into the process.
If Goldilocks were a speedskater, hockey ice would be medium hard, for fast puck movement and sharp turns. Figure skating ice would be softer, allowing push off for jumps and so the ice doesn’t shatter on landing. Curling ice is the softest and warmest of all, for controlled sliding.
For speedskating ice to be just right, it must be hard, cold and clean. And very, very smooth.
“The blades are so sharp, that if there is some dirt, the blade will lose the edge,’’ Messer said, and the skater will lose speed.
Speedskater Enrico Fabris, who won two Olympic golds in Turin in 2006, has traded in his skates to be deputy sports manager at the speedskating venue in Rho. For him, perfect ice means the conditions are the same for all skaters — and then if it's fast ice, so much the better.
"It's more of a pleasure to skate on this ice,'' he said.
Messer’s first Olympics were in Calgary in 1988 — the first time speedskating was held indoors. “That gave us some advantages because we didn’t have to worry about the weather, wind blowing or rain,’’ he said. Now he is upping the challenge by becoming the first ice master to build a temporary rink for the Olympics.
Before Messer arrived in Italy, workers spent weeks setting up insulation to level the floor and then a network of pipes and rubber tubes that carry glycol — an antifreeze — that is brought down to minus 7 or minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 to 19.4 degrees Fahrenheit) to make the ice.
Water is run through a purification system — but it can’t be too pure, or the ice that forms will be too brittle. Just the right amount of impurities “holds the ice together,’’ Messer said.
The first layers of water are applied slowly, with a spray nozzle; after the ice reaches a few centimeters it is painted white — a full day’s work — and the stripes are added to make lanes.
“The first one takes about 45 minutes. And then as soon as it freezes, we go back and do it again, and again and again. So we do it hundreds of times,’’ Messer said.
As the ice gets thicker, and is more stable, workers apply subsequent layers of water with hoses. Messer attaches his hose to hockey sticks for easier spreading.
What must absolutely be avoided is dirt, dust or frost — all of which can cause friction for the skaters, slowing them down. The goal is that when the skaters push “they can go as far as possible with the least amount of effort,’’ Messer said.
The Zamboni ice resurfacing machine plays a key role in keeping the track clean, cutting off a layer and spraying water to make a new surface.
One challenge is gauging how quickly the water from the resurfacing machine freezes in the temporary rink.
Another is getting the ice to the right thickness so that the Zamboni, weighing in at six tons, doesn’t shift the insulation, rubber tubing or ice itself.
“When you drive that out, if there’s anything moving it will move. We don’t want that,’’ Messer said.
The rink got its first big test on Nov. 29-30 during a Junior World Cup event. In a permanent rink, test events are usually held a year before the Olympics, leaving more time for adjustments. “We have a very small window to learn,’’ Messer acknowledged.
Dutch speedskater Kayo Vos, who won the men’s neo-senior 1,000 meters, said the ice was a little soft — but Messer didn’t seem too concerned.
“We went very modest to start, now we can start to change the temperatures and try to make it faster and still maintain it as a safe ice,’’ he said.
Fine-tuning the air temperature and humidity and ice temperature must be done methodically — taking into account that there will be 6,000 spectators in the venue for each event. The next real test will be on Jan. 31, when the Olympians take to the ice for their first training session.
“Eighty percent of the work is done but the hardest part is the last 20 percent, where we have to try to find the values and the way of running the equipment so all the skaters get the same conditions and all the skaters get the best conditions,’’ Messer said.
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Serpentines are set on the ice of the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Workers clean the ice surface during a peed skating Junior World Cup and Olympic test event, in Rho, near Milan, Italy, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
