The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office determined that a police officer was “justified” in the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy in June, the office announced Monday.
The brief statement from the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch said the officer was “justified” in his “use of force” when he shot the baby, Kohen Wiley, in a Walmart parking lot on June 14. The statement did not mention Kohen by name or identify the officer involved in the shooting.
Local media outlet Action News 5 identified the officer as Hunter Foster based on a records request of officer-involved shootings.
The shooting occurred in Senatobia, a city of about 8,000 people in the northern part of the state, about 40 miles south of Memphis, after police responded to a shoplifting call. According to the statement initially released by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, two adults — later identified as Kohen’s mother and a family friend — and a “juvenile child,” referring to Kohen, fled the store and then drove toward officers at the scene, at which point one of the officers fired his gun.
But an independent autopsy released by the family’s legal team and reviewed by MS NOW found that the baby was shot through the side of his body, throwing into question the authorities’ claim that the car was driving toward police. At a press conference this summer, the family’s legal team displayed a photo of the passenger-side window of the vehicle almost entirely blown out.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, said at a press conference earlier this year that the officer fired three to four shots — even after she held Kohen up to show them there was a baby in the car — and that one hit her son’s ribcage as she held him in the passenger seat. MS NOW could not reach Wiley for comment on Monday.
Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney who represents the family, slammed the news from Fitch’s office on Monday, asking, “How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?”
“If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it,” Crump continued. “We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”
Mississippi Today and The New York Times previously reported that Foster allegedly made racist remarks toward two co-workers, one of whom is Black and the other of whom is white and has a child with a Black partner.
When MS NOW reached out to Martin Zummach, a lawyer the Times identified as representing Foster, he would not answer MS NOW’s questions about the case and hung up the phone.
Spokespeople for the attorney general’s office, the Senatobia Police Department and Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment. Graves acknowledged the community’s “tremendous pain” in a video statement a few days after the killing.
At his funeral, Kohen was remembered as “goofy,” a fan of the cartoon character Bluey and a beloved baby with a family excited for his future, NBC News reported.
The post Mississippi attorney general says police officer who fatally shot 1-year-old was ‘justified’ appeared first on MS NOW.
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