“If we knew who it was, that would have never happened,” Walker said.
But Hoover, the police lieutenant, said he believed Walker and Taylor “ambushed” the officers.
“They knew we were there. I mean, hell, the neighbors knew we were there,” he said.
Police interviews with Taylor’s neighbors, however, didn’t clear up the confusion. Two neighbors said they didn’t hear the police knocking. One of them also said he was certain he didn’t hear police identify themselves. Another man gave three differing accounts — in two of them saying he heard officers identify themselves.
After the burst of gunshots, the officers focused on the wounded Mattingly. No one else entered Taylor's apartment until a SWAT team arrived — even as she lay bleeding.
A neighbor, Summer Dickerson, told investigators she was jolted out of bed by the gunshots. Outside the apartment, she said, an officer she recognized told her that “some drug-dealing girl shot at the police.”
Walker initially told police that Taylor was the one who shot at them. He later said he was the one who fired the gun.
One law enforcement officer testified that no drugs were found in the apartment but that police ultimately never executed the search warrant.
