Mississippi attorney general rules fatal police shooting of one-year-old as ‘justified’

On Monday, the office of the Mississippi attorney general, Lynn Fitch, announced that the police shooting of Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old, as he sat in his mother’s lap “was justified”. The statement came four months after the baby was killed in Senatobia, Mississippi.

On 14 June, officers in Senatobia, a small city near Memphis, were responding to a shoplifting call alleging Vellesiya Wiley, the baby’s mother, and Latoya Ferrell, a friend, had stolen a pack of diapers. Neither woman has been charged with a crime. Officials have not released any evidence of shoplifting.

According to police reports, on the day of the shooting, the women and child exited the store, entered their vehicle and began to leave the parking lot when officers arrived.

The police drew their weapons. Wiley lifted the baby up to indicate that there was a child in the car. An officer, identified by other records as Sgt Hunter Foster, fired into the vehicle, killing Kohen Wiley and wounding Ferrell. Foster is white; both Wileys and Ferrell are Black.

The Mississippi bureau of investigation, which investigated the shooting, alleged that the driver “drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one”. But the civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, released an independent autopsy that indicated Wiley was shot from the side of the car, not the front, which contradicted officers’ statements that Ferrell headed towards them.

“ I watched my baby take his first breath, and I watched my baby take his last breath,” Kohen’s mother said during a press conference after the shooting.

It is not yet clear if or when law enforcement officials will release footage from the incident.

The shooting was just the most recent in a series of incidents involving Senatobia’s police force. The town is about 40% Black.

In September, Senatobia fired its police chief, who reportedly used racial slurs. And in 2023, the town made national news after an officer arrested and placed in a cell a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in public. That child was later sentenced to three months’ probation.

Last year, the town’s aldermen voted to replace the police chief who was serving at the time of the 10-year-old’s arrest with Harold Vanderford, who served when Wiley was killed. He has been replaced with Angelica Maze, who is Black.

“A one-year-old was shot and killed by an officer of this department, and nearly three months later his family still has not been allowed to see the footage,” Crump said at the time. “The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process. MBI has the footage. Release it, finish the investigation into Sgt Foster, and give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died.”