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Woman files lawsuit accusing Breonna Taylor cop Brett Hankison of sexual assault after offering her a ride home from bar
A WOMAN who claims the cop who was fired in connection with Breonna Taylor's death sexually assaulted her – and filed a lawsuit on Tuesday.
, who was fired as a Louisville Metro police officer in June , has been accused of assaulting a woman, who was then 22 years old, in 2018.
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NBC News, the woman, identified in the lawsuit as Margo Borders, claims she met Hankison at the Tin Roof bar in , where he was in uniform and working a side gig as security.
Borders claimed that Hankison – who she had known through a mutual friend since 2017 – offered her a ride home, where he allegedly her.
She said she was left “physically injured and mentally battered” from the alleged incident, reported.
“When he offered to take her home, she was thrilled,” the woman’s attorney, Sam Aguiar, said.
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“He was a . There was a sense of trust there. She didn’t have to pay for an , she was a broke law student.”
The lawsuit claims that was involved in a pattern of sexual assaults: that he met women while working as a security guard and took them home to allegedly attack them.
Borders waived her right to anonymity by revealing herself as the woman behind the lawsuit on social media.
Earlier this year, .
Borders posted her account from 2018, claiming that Hankison sexually assaulted her in her own apartment while she was unconscious.
"In April of 2018 I went out to a bar with some friends," she wrote. "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.”
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"He drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious."
She 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.
"I never reported him out of fear of retaliation. I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer.
"Who do you call when the person who assaulted you is a police officer? Who were they going to believe? I knew it wouldn’t be me. "
Borders later identified Hankison as the alleged assailant, and urged her followers to "demand justice.”
Another woman, Emily Terry, wrote on last spring that she began walking home from a bar intoxicated.
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"A police officer pulled up next to me and offered me a ride home. I thought to myself, 'Wow. That is so nice of him.' And willingly got in."
She continued: "He began making sexual advances towards me; rubbing my thigh, kissing my forehead, and calling me 'baby.'
"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.
"My friend reported this the next day, and of course nothing came from it."
Alongside a photo of Hankison, Terry wrote: "This is Brett Hankison...Flash forward [to 2020], I see his face. This face. Involved ."
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Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said at the time that both women had been contacted by the police department’s Integrity Unit in order to "initiate and conduct an investigation."
Aguiar said in a statement this week: “We hope through this civil litigation that Brett Hankison will be held accountable.”
“That his conduct will be exposed, that it will be made clear that this is something LMPD tolerated, that they had notice of, that they never acted on.
“In civil litigation, you can’t ask for this to have never happened. You can’t go back in time and day we want the result here to be we go in time machine and ask that you would have fired Brett Hankison so he didn’t do this to all of these women, so you have to ask for money damages.”
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The lawsuit, as reported by WHAS, names Chief Steve Conrad and multiple Metro police officers, claiming they are supposed to report coworkers for wrongful conduct.
The lawsuit alleges Hankison’s fellow cops "took no action to report, investigate or safeguard" against the alleged abuse.
A spokesperson for the department said: “We are unable to speak publicly on matters before the court and must cite pending litigation as our reason for not commenting further.”
After Taylor was shot by police in March, Hankison and two other Louisville officers – Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove – were placed on administrative leave while the department investigates their actions.
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