An Airman with the Air National Guard stands guard during a protest against the deaths of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police and George Floyd by Minneapolis police, in Louisville on May 31.Credit…Bryan Woolston/Reuters
A man was killed early Monday in Louisville, Ky., when police officers and National Guard troops were breaking up a group of protesters. Someone in the crowd fired at them, and the troops and officers fired back, the authorities said.
The shooting happened just after midnight, the authorities said, when officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department and the National Guard soldiers were enforcing the city’s curfew. The group of protesters had gathered outside a market in a neighborhood west of downtown.
Police officials said it was unclear whether the man, whose name has not been released, had fired a weapon.
Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said on Monday that he was starting an investigation into the fatal encounter. “Given the seriousness of the situation, I have authorized the Kentucky State Police to independently investigate the event,” Mr. Beshear, a Democrat, said in a statement.
As anger and anguish over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis boiled over into unrest in cities across the country last week, the tense demonstrations in Louisville were also fueled by a local death — that of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American woman who was killed March 13. Police officers executing a search warrant crashed into her apartment with a battering ram and shot her at least eight times.
According to The Louisville Courier Journal, the police were investigating two men who they believed were selling drugs out of a house that was far from Ms. Taylor’s home. A judge had signed a search warrant for her residence because the police said they believed that one of the two men had used the apartment to receive packages. The judge’s order was a so-called “no-knock” warrant, authorizing the police to enter without warning and without identifying themselves as law enforcement officers.
