The state offered little explanation for its ruling, and Kohen Wiley’s family is pressing for access to the bodycam footage.
On Monday, the Mississippi Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, announced that the police shooting of Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old boy, was deemed a legally permissible use of force. Kohen was killed in June near a Walmart while officers looked into diaper theft allegations involving his mother and a friend. Fitch provided no detailed rationale or list of evidence behind the decision, and the ruling has sparked national criticism.
According to a June 14 statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers from the Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shoplifting call and encountered two adults and a young child fleeing from the store into a vehicle. They attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver steered toward the officers, nearly striking one, and an officer discharged their weapon before the vehicle fled the scene. The family went to a nearby hospital, where Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, presents a different account in a video posted on X after the tragedy. She says that after police tried to halt her friend outside the Walmart, Wiley continued toward her car, insisting that the incident had “nothing to do” with her. Once inside the car, her friend arrived and began backing out, at which point officers approached the vehicle with guns drawn. She says that after she lifted Kohen to show him to the officers in an attempt to calm the situation, they opened fire. “The police claimed that [my friend] was forcing the vehicle toward them, but they were all on the right side, and she was driving toward the left,” she stated. In the ensuing months, the family organized several demonstrations demanding justice for Kohen.
The tragedy is intensified by the Senatobia Police Department’s opacity and by alleged analyses that challenge the MBI’s account. Mississippi Today reported that Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the Wiley family, contends that an independent autopsy conducted by forensic pathologist Robert Mitchell indicates the bullets penetrated through the front passenger door rather than the windshield, suggesting the officer may not have been in the vehicle’s path when he fired.
In response to Fitch’s announcement on Monday, Crump issued a statement asking, “How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to view the body-camera footage?”
“If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth,” he added. To this point, the SPD has declined to release the footage, saying it is standard procedure during an ongoing investigation.
Crump also highlighted complaints of racism within the SPD: “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.”
The SPD’s chief at the time, Harold Vanderford, was terminated after journalists from Mississippi Today, The New York Times, and Verite News revealed a trove of racist text messages he had sent. According to Verite News, one of the messages included a coarse racial insult, and Senatobia’s Board of Aldermen rejected his attempted resignation, voting instead to fire him on September 1.
Crump also cited a complaint filed by Officer Dexter Smith, who alleged that Sergeant Hunter Foster—the officer who shot Kohen—made a racially charged remark on June 12, just two days before the incident. Mississippi Today notes that Smith claimed he was in the booking room when Foster said the remark to colleagues, and Smith said he had little prior relationship with Foster.
It is hard not to feel outraged that a child’s life was lost over something as minor as shoplifting—a misdemeanor in Mississippi that does not justify lethal force, even for diapers. With the bodycam footage still unreleased, the public is left with only the state’s account of the investigation. Given the repeated instances of racism cited within the department, it should not be surprising if the public remains skeptical of the state’s assurances.
