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Former Detective Who Fatally Shot Breonna Taylor Sues to Get His Job Back

His lawyer says a decision to uphold his termination was “arbitrary and unlawful.”

Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville Metro Police detective who fired the bullet that killed Breonna Taylor, has filed a lawsuit seeking to get his job back. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Cosgrove’s lawyer argued that the Louisville Metro Police Merit Board’s decision to uphold his firing was “arbitrary and unlawful due to actions in excess of its authority or in violation of due process,” the Courier-Journal reports. The lawsuit also alleges that a member of the board at the time of the vote had a “conflict of interest” that warranted recusal, though it does not specify what the conflict was. Cosgrove shot 16 times into Taylor’s apartment during a botched no-knock raid in March 2020, with the FBI finding that he fired the shot that killed the 26-year-old medical worker. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired a shot at police as they entered, saying he believed they were intruders. Cosgrove said during a board hearing on his termination last December that he regrets killing Taylor but “did what I thought was right that evening” to address a “deadly threat.”