Louisville police release 'heartbreaking' body camera video showing officers kill suicidal woman

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Describing a graphic, "heartbreaking" response to a woman experiencing a mental health crisis, Louisville Metro Police released body camera video Friday of officers shooting and killing a suicidal woman holding a jagged piece of porcelain inside an apartment complex near Jeffersontown.

The video, linked below, shows two officers responding to a 911 call from the cousin of 28-year-old Katelyn Hall, who locked herself in the bathroom and was harming herself. In an opening statement, LMPD Deputy Chief Emily McKinley said Hall wasn't "eligible" for a deflection response because she was actively trying to kill herself —she had slit her wrist and ingested cleaning products, and was armed with a piece of glass.

On its website, Seven Counties Services said deflection cannot help in situations where there are safety concerns, citing examples where someone has already taken steps to harm themselves or where there is an active threat involving a weapon.

According to Louisville Metro Emergency Services, deflection services were called almost 5,000 times in 2025 — the Mobile Crisis Response team was dispatched almost 950 times.

McKinley said officers must respond to situations too dangerous for a deflection response. Each situation poses a "unique and, often, chaotic challenge" to those officers, she said.

"LMPD is open and willing to try anything that prevents something like this from every happening," McKinley said during Friday's news conference. "This is not something we ever want to experience. We don't want our officers to experience. We don't want communities to experience this or family members. This is a terrible situation to be in."

McKinley said patrol officers responded at 7:45 p.m. Friday, March 27, to the 9800 block of Vieux Carre Drive on a report of a person "experiencing a mental health or behavioral health crisis."

The woman was "highly agitated, incoherent and making suicidal statements." Police on scene attempted to de-escalate through verbal communication and requested additional officers bring less lethal tools. In the video, Officers Robert Baker and Robert Gabbard tried to de-escalate the situation from outside the bathroom, but Hall repeatedly yelled "Katelyn is already dead" and "It's over." By that point, McKinley said Hall slit her wrists and lost a considerable amount of blood.

"This happened extremely quickly," McKinley said, adding this situation has already been used in officer training sessions. "This happened in less than a second."

The video shows Baker and Gabbard waited to breech the bathroom door until backup arrived. During that time, Hall is heard on body camera video screaming "I will kill anyone who tries to save me."

Crews with the Anchorage-Middletown Fire Department responded shortly thereafter and forced entry. When the door opened, Hall opened the door bathroom, "exits rapidly" with a large, sharp object McKinley said was a "jagged" 1-foot long piece of porcelain she'd gotten after breaking the toilet. Baker and Gabbard both fired their guns. Hall was rushed to UofL Hospital, where she died.

McKinley said she couldn't speak to why neither officer opted for a taser or other non-lethal options before firing at Hall, saying Baker and Gabbard will have to answer those questions as part of the department's Public Integrity Unit and Public Safety Unit investigations.

"Our tasers take time to deploy," McKinley said. "You have to fire twice. So you fire one probe and you put another probe somewhere else. So it takes a little bit more time to effectively use a taser in a situation like this. It could be very difficult when a subject is advancing toward you in such a confined space."

LMPD policy says: "When handling non-criminal behavioral health calls and wellness checks, officers are strongly encouraged to:

Evaluate the dangers to the public (refer to Safety Priorities, SOP 9.1.1)
Create distance
Wait for appropriate backup
Exhaust de-escalation tactics
Consider disengagement

Force should be resorted to only when the medical or behavioral health emergency has created an imminent threat of harm to the person, or others, and force is reasonably necessary to mitigate the threat."

Baker joined LMPD on Feb. 20, 2023, and has 10 letters of commendation along with a letter of reprimand for a "chargeable accident." In 2024, a Louisville man wrote Baker a thank you later after he refused to shoot him amid a mental health crisis.

Gabbard joined LMPD five months after Baker and has 19 letters of commendation with no reprimands.

'It just doesn't make sense'

Before they saw video footage of the shooting, Hall's relatives said her mental health was deteriorating in recent years and believe the situation could have been handled differently.

"She was beautiful, and her soul was beautiful," said Tara Tunis, Hall's cousin. "She was always smiling."

Hall's family said her death left them searching for answers.

"It doesn't make sense to me or the family or her mother that watched her die," Tunis said. "It just doesn't make sense.

"Until we see the video footage, I just don't believe that she went after them like that. This could have been avoided. She didn't need to be shot and killed. I feel like she was murdered."

After seeing the footage, Halls cousin Tara Tunis said "This was the hardest thing I ever had to watch! I still believe she was murdered! She clearly didn't go after them like they initially stated! There were so many more options they could have used to take her down. I hope justice is served!"