JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s attorney general says a Senatobia officer was justified in using force when he responded to a shoplifting call and fired at a moving vehicle that investigators said was driving toward police, killing a 1-year-old boy who was inside the car.
The conclusion of the state’s investigation into the shooting death of Kohen Wiley follows months of mourning and calls for justice, both nationally and in the small town where the shooting took place, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Memphis, Tennessee.
The shooting occurred in mid-June as Senatobia officers responded to a shoplifting call at a 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. Wiley and her friend are both Black. Police believed they stole diapers and baby clothes. Kohen’s mother has denied she or her friend stole anything, and neither of them have been charged with shoplifting or any other counts, according to online state and county court records.
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.
Martin Zummach, an attorney who represents the officer who fired the shot that killed Kohen, says the attorney general’s findings cleared his client of criminal wrongdoing. He said the driver of the vehicle “tried to kill” his client and other officers who were present.
“He had no choice but to fire his weapon,” Zummach told The Associated Press.
In a video released days after the shooting, Vellesiya Wiley disputed that her friend, who was driving, headed toward the officers.
Lawyer calls for release of body-worn camera footage
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.
Crump on Monday pointed out that authorities have yet to release video footage of the encounter to support the attorney general's finding that the shooting was a justified use of force.
“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 said in a statement. "If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”
A photo of the car after the shooting shows that the passenger window was shattered and an apparent bullet hole pierced the windshield on the passenger side. The other woman in the car was badly wounded, authorities said.
John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force on moving vehicles, said that if the vehicle had been moving toward officers, the best practice would have been for them to get out of the way.
“This shooting was almost certainly unjustified,” Gross told the AP. “In terms of both officer safety, the safety of the occupants of the vehicle and general public safety, you don’t shoot vehicles.”
Charles “Joe” Key, a firearms and ballistics expert and former Baltimore police lieutenant who typically testifies in defense of police, said the image of the vehicle after the shooting suggests that the officer fired from the side.
“That indicates that the officer who did the shooting was not personally at risk at the time he shot,” Key said. “The only way it would have been justified is if officers had been in the path of a car driving directly at them."
“The body-worn camera’s going to have to tell if anybody was in danger,” he added.
Marquell Bridges, an activist who has been working with Kohen Wiley’s family, called for the release of video footage of the shooting in a statement.
“His family deserves the truth. The public deserves transparency,” Bridges said. “We will not be silent. We will not look away. And we will not allow the life of a Black child to be treated as though it means nothing.”
Child’s death stokes simmering tensions
The shooting is the latest in a string of incidents that has eroded trust between the Senatobia police department and the city’s Black residents.
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 an accessible parking space in the same Walmart lot where Kohen was shot. Two years earlier, a Senatobia police officer was fired for arresting a Black 10-year-old 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 used racist slurs in private text messages.
Brook reported from New Orleans.
