LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Kentucky Court of Appeals sided with the Louisville Metro Police Department in its decision to terminate Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville detective who fired the shot that killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment.

Cosgrove appealed the ruling of Circuit Court Judge Melissa Logan Bellows, who also upheld the decision of LMPD and its Police Merit Board to fire Cosgrove in early 2021. 

In its ruling, the Court of Appeals said “substantial evidence supported the Board’s conclusion” that Cosgrove did not have “sufficient target identification and isolation” when he fired into Taylor’s apartment, a violation of LMPD’s policy on the use of deadly force.

The merit board upheld Cosgrove’s firing in Dec. 2021 by a 5-2 vote, and his attempts to appeal that were denied.

Cosgrove was one of three officers involved in the deadly no-knock drug raid on Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020. He was returning fire from her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, when he fired the shot that killed the 26-year-old Black woman.

Taylor’s death after the raid partly sparked the widespread racial justice protests seen in over 2,000 U.S. cities over the summer of 2020, alongside the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Former LMPD officer Kelly Goodlett admitted in federal court that she and another officer falsified information in the warrant used to justify the raid. That confirmed to many, including U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, that Taylor never should have been visited by armed officers on March 13, 2020.