The State of Mississippi on Thursday, Oct. 22, released video of the police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley, including body camera footage from the officer who fired into a vehicle carrying the toddler, his mother and another woman outside a Senatobia Walmart.
The release came three days after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office ruled the June 14 shooting justified, declining to prosecute the officer. It also followed the leaking of portions of the footage to news outlets before Kohen’s family had an opportunity to view it privately.
For relatives who had spent four months demanding answers, the sequence of events added another layer of pain to an already devastating loss.
“The word ‘justified’ has haunted me since Monday,” said Veronica Roberson, Kohen’s maternal grandmother, during an emotional news conference Thursday.
“I went to work, and I had to find out through news sources,” she said. “No one reached out to the family, no courtesy, not a single call, a heads-up, anything to prepare us for what we was about to face.”
Then came what Roberson described as another indignity.
“The second slap in the face for me was leaked videos,” she said. “You tell us that we’re gonna watch the videos first, the family. You know, that’s a courtesy of the family, but I seen all videos from multiple outlets.”
“I feel like we’ve been robbed of this experience.”
Standing alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump, Memphis attorney Van Turner and community activists at Senatobia Church of Christ, Roberson and Kohen’s paternal grandmother Lassandra Williams struggled to reconcile what they had seen with the state’s conclusion.
“After what I’ve seen today, I’m having a difficult time understanding the word ‘justified,’” Williams said.
What the video shows
The footage offers multiple perspectives on the chaotic encounter that unfolded June 14, when Senatobia officers responded to an alleged shoplifting incident involving diapers at Walmart.
Video shows Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, carrying him as she and another woman hurry toward a sedan in the parking lot. Officers rush toward the vehicle, several with guns drawn, shouting commands for the occupants to stop.
The driver backs up, striking a parked vehicle. As officers converge, the sedan accelerates forward and turns left, passing close to officers positioned near its front.
Body camera footage from Sgt. Hunter Foster shows the officer near the moving vehicle as he fires into it, including from the passenger side where Kohen was sitting in his mother’s lap.
The encounter unfolds in seconds.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation initially reported that the vehicle drove toward officers, nearly striking one. The footage illustrates the danger posed by the moving car, while also raising questions about the officers’ tactics and the timing of the gunfire.
In a brief statement Monday, Fitch’s office said its review found the officer’s use of force justified. A separate communication to state public safety officials indicated there was insufficient evidence of criminal conduct to pursue prosecution.
The City of Senatobia acknowledged the ruling and extended sympathy to Kohen’s family.
Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has defended his client’s actions, arguing that he faced an immediate threat from the approaching vehicle. Use-of-force experts interviewed by The Associated Press offered differing assessments of whether Foster’s response was justified.
But Crump and Turner argue that the confrontation should never have escalated to gunfire — and that the final shot was fired after the immediate danger had passed.
‘Shot from the side … was not justified’
Crump said the family’s legal team viewed the complete footage Thursday morning, shortly before addressing reporters.
“This was excessive from the very start,” Crump said. “I mean, they came out with guns drawn for a shoplifting misdemeanor.”
He argued that officers could have recorded the vehicle’s license plate and investigated the alleged theft later rather than confronting the occupants with weapons drawn.
“Firing into a car in a busy Walmart parking lot is reckless,” Crump said. “It is a miracle that nobody else was hit.”
But the attorneys focused much of their criticism on the final shot. In July, Crump released preliminary findings from an independent forensic review concluding that the bullet that killed Kohen entered the right side of his chest and exited the left.
Crump said Thursday that the footage supports those findings.
According to Crump, investigators told the legal team three shots were fired. The attorneys were still examining the precise timing of the shots, but Crump repeatedly argued that the final one — which he identified as fatal — was unjustified.
“What we know based on our observation of the video, the third bullet from the side, the bullet that killed one-year-old Baby Kohen Wiley, was not justified,” Crump said.
The attorneys’ identification of the final shot as fatal remains their interpretation of the evidence. The video’s timing and the circumstances surrounding each shot are central to their disagreement with the state.
Turner urged viewers to examine the footage carefully.
“Was the car an incoming threat or was the car attempting to flee?” Turner asked. “The car was attempting to flee when that last shot was fired.”
He argued that even if officers faced danger moments earlier, the threat had passed when Foster fired from the side.
“There was no reason at all to fire that last shot when the driver was attempting not to hit the officers, but to get away from the officers,” Turner said.
‘Somebody got to help us’
For Kohen’s grandmothers, the arguments about trajectories and police procedures did little to ease their grief.
Roberson described watching officers rush toward the car with weapons drawn.
“He ran out there. You put yourself in that way,” she said of Foster. “You shot my grandbaby from the side of the car. How are you in danger if you on the passenger side of the car, the car is going to the left?”
Then she appealed for help.
“Somebody got to help us with this,” she said. “And I won’t stop until we get justice for my grandbaby.”
Kohen’s paternal grandmother expressed similar disbelief.
“When anybody come up with how to explain that to me, let me know,” she said.
“But until then, I’m gonna keep fighting. I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to make sure that the right thing is done, because I don’t understand ‘justified’ right now.”
The family has questioned both the state’s determination and how officials communicated it. Roberson said the announcement came without warning, and the leaked footage compounded the hurt.
The source of those leaks remains unknown. Crump acknowledged that the legal team did not know who was responsible.
The fight moves beyond Mississippi
Although Fitch’s decision ended the state’s criminal review, Kohen’s legal team said its efforts to seek accountability will continue.
Turner announced plans to seek federal involvement, including a review by the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI.
“Since the city, the county, and the state has not done anything to hold Foster accountable, we have to go to the federal government,” Turner said.
Multiple media outlets are reporting that Foster has resigned from the Senatobia Police Department. During Thursday’s news conference, Turner said he had just learned of the resignation and immediately called for another step — revocation of Foster’s law enforcement certification.
“What we need is for him to be decertified so that he’s not able to go to another police department and do the same thing,” Turner said.
The department has already undergone significant changes. Former Police Chief Harold “Hal” Vanderford was fired in September amid controversy over the use of racist language in private text messages. Angelica Maze was subsequently appointed interim chief.
Local activists said those changes have not resolved the concerns surrounding Kohen’s death.
Patrick Lumumba of the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency became emotional as he described the months of demonstrations and demands for answers.
“It’s been a long road. It’s been a long fight,” Lumumba said, pausing to compose himself. “But I think the tears come from the fact that we got an even longer road to go down.”
Marquell Bridges of the Building Bridges Coalition called for continued community organizing and a boycott of Walmart.
A birthday that will never come
Kohen’s death sparked weeks of protests and calls for transparency before his June 27 funeral at Hosanna Family Worship Center in Pope, Miss.
There, relatives remembered a toddler who loved the cartoon character Bluey, playing with his toys and pushing a toy lawnmower. After the service, his small casket was carried away in a white horse-drawn carriage, with his parents riding along toward the burial site.
Now the family faces another painful milestone. Kohen would have turned 2 on Nov. 1.
Crump acknowledged the approaching birthday Thursday, urging the community to continue supporting the family.
But for his grandmothers, the immediate struggle remains finding meaning in a decision they learned about through the news — and reconciling that decision with the images they finally watched.
“I don’t understand how it’s okay for someone to take a sweet, I’m talking about a sweet, innocent soul,” Kohen’s paternal grandmother said.
“Lord knows I miss him so much.”
