‘I was her shadow’

Before Breonna Taylor was a name chanted in the streets and scrawled on signs, before she was a face emblazoned on street murals and the cover of Oprah’s magazine, before she was the reason millions of Americans started clamoring for criminal charges to be brought against four Louisville police officers, before she came to symbolize the Black lives incomprehensibly snuffed out by law enforcement, she was Ju’Niyah Palmer’s sister — her companion, role model and confidante.

“She was my person,” Palmer, 20, told The Washington Post in an interview. “I was her shadow.”

And then, in a matter of minutes, Taylor was gone, and it all felt so impossible that Palmer couldn’t believe it had really happened. Taylor had been shot to death by Louisville police officers in her own apartment — their apartment.

The sisters had always been inseparable. Palmer, six years younger, grew up wanting to do everything her big sister did: When Taylor played basketball, Palmer became a water girl so she could be there at the games. When Taylor went out with friends, Palmer begged to tag along. Palmer remembers how Taylor would sometimes roll her eyes at her, a mix of irritation and affection. You’re so annoying, she’d say, but then: Come on, hurry up.

After they moved with their mother from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Louisville 12 years ago, the girls shared a room with matching dressers and slept side by side on a queen bed with a gleaming silver frame. Palmer brought that bed with her 2½ years ago when she moved in with Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Whenever their schedules didn’t keep them apart — Taylor worked nights as an emergency room technician, Palmer is a pharmacy technician — the sisters were together.

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