Content note: This story describes the fatal police shooting of a 1-year-old and includes an officer’s profanity.
Months after a Mississippi police officer shot at an occupied vehicle and killed an infant whose mother had been accused of shoplifting, the state’s attorney general has announced that the officer who fired the deadly shot will not face charges. As the state defends the deadly shooting, concerned citizens and advocates for the bereaved family are calling for answers, transparency and accountability surrounding the case. While questions about the potential role of racial bias linger, newly released footage of the shooting has drawn differing interpretations of what happened.
Mississippi rules shooting ‘justified’
The Mississippi Free Press reported that Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced Monday that her office had cleared the officer who shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in a confrontation with Kohen’s mother and another woman in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi. “Today, the Office of the Attorney General announced it has completed the review of a June 14, 2026 incident in Senatobia involving one officer with the Senatobia Police Department,” the attorney general’s office said in a brief statement released about its decision. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified. Pursuant to Section 45-1-6 of the Mississippi Code, the review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,” said the statement on behalf of Fitch, who is also a candidate in Mississippi’s 2027 governor’s race.
As Blavity previously reported, in June Kohen was shot and killed in the parking lot of a Walmart by police responding to a call alleging shoplifting of diapers. Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, says that she was shopping at Walmart with her infant and another woman, Latoya Ferrell, whom The Associated Press reports is Kohen’s great-aunt, when the women were accused of shoplifting diapers. The two women were confronted in the store’s parking lot by police officers who eventually fired into the car, striking and killing Kohen and seriously injuring Ferrell. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has claimed that police fired at the vehicle as it “drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.” Vellesiya Wiley has disputed authorities’ account of the events leading up to the shooting. She has said that footage from the Walmart self-checkout counter would demonstrate that Ferrell had paid for the items she was accused of stealing; she also acknowledged that Ferrell struck a parked car while trying to leave but denied that she ever drove toward the officers. Vellesiya Wiley also said that, as they were being confronted in the parking lot, she held up her son to show the officers that a baby was in the car, claiming that the car was fired upon anyway.
After calls for transparency, video footage of shooting released
The decision not to charge the officer who shot and killed Kohen outraged many and left the infant’s family looking for answers. Critics have pointed to a lack of transparency surrounding the case, including uncertainty about what evidence and testimony the attorney general’s office evaluated in making its decision. Vellesiya Wiley stated earlier this month that she had not been interviewed as part of the investigation. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Vellesiya Wiley, condemned the attorney general’s office for its decision to rule the shooting justified. “How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?” Crump asked. He also pointed to the potential role of racism in the handling of the case. “This is a department whose chief was fired after reports of racial slurs in his text messages, and whose officer faced a complaint alleging a racially offensive remark two days before he shot Kohen.”
Although Mississippi authorities have not confirmed the identity of the officer who fired the fatal shot, The New York Times has identified 33-year-old Senatobia Police Department Sgt. Hunter Foster as the only officer present at the scene who had been put on administrative leave. Foster is white, while Ferrell, Wiley and her son Kohen are Black. Foster, the Times notes, had twice been accused of making racially offensive remarks toward coworkers within the police force. Former Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford, who was fired by the city’s Board of Aldermen after he was revealed to have used racist language in text messages, did not take disciplinary action against Foster, according to the Times; there is no indication he took disciplinary action in either of the alleged racial incidents.
Video footage of the incident, seemingly taken from police body cameras and Walmart security cameras, was released Tuesday. As the Times describes it, police run from inside the store to the parking lot. As they repeatedly yell “stop the car,” the vehicle backs into a parked car before accelerating forward in the direction of the officers, driving between two of them and eventually hitting another parked car. As the car drives forward, several shots can be heard fired by police. The video also appears to show the aftermath of the shooting, with one officer declaring that he “didn’t even see a f***ing baby in her lap” and another responding, “nobody knew the baby was there. All I saw was two females in the car.”
Other outlets that reviewed the footage describe it differently. Darkhorse Press reports that the car struck a sheriff’s deputy while backing up and appeared to make contact with Foster as it accelerated, while Straight Arrow News reports that Foster appears to fire additional shots from the car’s side, which it says line up with the family’s independent autopsy. The footage does not include body-camera video from Foster, the Mississippi Free Press reported. The New York Times reported that additional footage of the incident exists and is scheduled to be shown to Kohen’s family Thursday, Oct. 22.
How to read the newly released video is in dispute. Questions remain about the decision by police to initiate an armed confrontation over an alleged shoplifting incident and potential racial bias on the part of the officer. The release of videos of the shooting answers some calls for transparency, though the footage does not include body-camera video from Foster, and for many it has not resolved the question of whether a police officer was justified in his decision to shoot at the car.