A former Louisville police detective involved in the botched raid that ended in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor has been accused by a woman of sexual assault after offering her a ride home from a bar in 2018, according to a report.
Margo Borders, an attorney, accused Brett Hankison of “willfully, intentionally, painfully and violently” sexually assaulting her, The Courier Journal reported, citing a new lawsuit.
In a previous statement to the paper, Borders called Hankison “a predator of the worst kind.”
Hankison and two other cops – Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove — stormed Taylor’s apartment while executing a no-knock warrant March 13 and opened fire, killing the 26-year-old black EMT while she slept.
He was charged with wanton endangerment for shooting into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment and was fired. The others were cleared by a Kentucky grand jury of any criminal liability in Taylor’s death.
Borders and Hankison previously met in 2017 and had contact in social media, according to The Courier Journal.
On June 4, Borders described the alleged sexual assault when she was a law student in a lengthy post on Facebook.
“In April of 2018 I went out to a bar with some friends. I went to call an uber home and a police officer who I had interacted with on many occasions at bars in St. Matthews offered me a ride home,” she wrote.
“He drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious,” Borders continued.
“It took me months to process what had happened and to realize that it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t ask for that to happen by allowing him to give me a ride home,” she wrote, adding that she “never reported him out of fear of retaliation.”
She added: “I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer.”
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court, said that once Borders regained consciousness, she yelled for Hankison to get off of her.
Later that day, the officer messaged Borders and tried to “suggest that the two had engaged in consensual relations,” according to the suit, which alleges that she was left bloodied and in “tremendous physical pain.”
The suit also includes comments from nine other women who accused Hankison of either inappropriate conduct or sexual assault, the paper reportred.
Another woman also publicly accused him of sexual misconduct in an Instagram post where she claimed Hankison offered her a ride home from a bar and proceeded to rub her, kiss her and call her “baby,” according to the suit.
“Mortified, I did not move. I continued to talk about my grad school experiences and ignored him. As soon as he pulled up to my apartment building, I got out of the car and ran to the back,” she wrote, adding that her friend reported the alleged incident the next day, “and of course nothing came from it.”
In addition to Hankison, the suit names former Louisville Police Chief Steve Conrad, other officers, the Tin Roof bar and its manager for failing to intervene or prevent the cop’s alleged conduct.
It alleges that the bar knew Hankison “routinely identified intoxicated young women, put them in his vehicle while in uniform and left the premises with them while already beginning to engage in visible misconduct,” according to the news outlet.
The Courier Journal said it could not reach Hankison’s attorney for comment.
The Louisville Metro Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the local Tin Roof declined to comment about the suit, the paper said.