By Sophie Bates
Contributing Writer
SENATOBIA, Miss. (AP) – A local police officer was justified in using deadly force in the June shooting death of a 1-year-old while responding to a shoplifting call, the state’s attorney general’s office announced Oct. 19.
The conclusion of the state’s investigation into the death of Kohen Wiley — killed as he sat in his mother’s arms inside a retreating vehicle — follows months of mourning and calls for justice and transparency across the nation.
In a statement released Oct. 19, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Sgt. Hunter Foster acted within the scope of the law when he fired his pistol at the car, killing Wiley and wounding the car’s driver.
“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 statement read. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified.”
The fatal shooting of an innocent child has further heightened already tense race relations tension in this small town near Memphis, Tennessee where the shooting occurred. Hunter is white; Kohen was Black, as is the car’s driver.
The shooting happened as Senatobia officers responded to a shoplifting call at a local Walmart, where they saw Vellesiya Wiley, Kohen’s mother, carrying her son as she and a friend left the store, got into a car and began driving away. Police reports indicate diapers and baby clothes were allegedly stolen.
According to a statement released shortly after the shooting by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the car drove toward law enforcement, prompting an officer to fire into the car, striking Kohen and his mother’s friend.
In a video released days after the shooting, Vellesiya Wiley denied that she or her friend stole anything and disputed that her friend, who was driving, headed toward the officers.
Ben Crump, a nationally renowned civil rights attorney who is representing Kohen’s family, has said results of a preliminary independent autopsy indicate Kohen was shot from the side of the car, not the front, contradicting officers’ claims that the car was heading toward them.
The shooting is the latest in a string of incidents that has eroded trust between the Senatobia police department and the city’s Black citizens.
Last year, a Senatobia officer threatened a Black woman with a Taser, pulling her from her car and onto the ground and arresting her during a confrontation over a handicapped parking space in the same Walmart lot where Kohen was shot. Two years earlier, a Senatobia police officer was fired for arresting a 10-year-old boy for urinating in public.
More recently, former Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired by the city’s board of aldermen, after reporting by the New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News alleged he use racist slurs in private text messages.
Sophie Bates writes for the Associated Press. Wave staff contributed to this report.
