Mississippi Attorney General Says Officer Force Was Justified in Death of 1-Year-Old Kohen Wiley

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi’s attorney general says a Senate officer was justified in using force when he responded to a shoplifting call and fired at a moving vehicle that investigators said was heading 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 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 to drive away. Wiley and her friend are both black. Police believed they stole diapers and baby clothes. Kohen’s mother has denied that she or her friend stole anything, and neither has been charged with shoplifting or any other charges, 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 shoot at the car, striking Kohen and her mother’s friend.

Martin Zummach, a lawyer 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 “attempted to kill” his client and other police officers present.

“He had no choice but to fire his gun,” Zummach told the Associated Press.

In a video released days after the shooting, Vellesiya Wiley disputed the fact that her friend, who was driving, headed toward the officers.

Lawyer requests release of body-worn camera footage

Ben Crump, a nationally known civil rights attorney who represents Kohen’s family, said the results of an independent preliminary autopsy indicate that Kohen was shot from the side of the car, not the front, contradicting the officers’ claims that the car was heading toward them.

Crump stressed Monday that authorities have not yet released video footage of the encounter to support the attorney general’s conclusion that the shooting was a justified use of force.

“How can anyone accept this conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public have still 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 won’t stop fighting until this family finds out the truth.”

A photo of the car after the shooting shows the passenger window was shattered and an apparent bullet hole pierced the passenger side windshield. The other woman in the car was seriously injured, authorities said.

John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force on moving vehicles, said that if the vehicle had been moving toward the officers, the best practice would have been for them to move out of the way.

“This shooting was almost certainly unjustified,” Gross told the AP. “In terms of officer safety, vehicle occupant safety and general public safety, you don’t shoot at vehicles.”

Charles “Joe” Key, a firearms and ballistics expert and former Baltimore police lieutenant who usually testifies in the police defense, said the image of the vehicle after the shooting suggests the officer fired from the side.

“This indicates that the officer who fired was not personally in danger at the time he fired,” Key said. “The only way this would have been justified is if the officers were in the path of a car driving directly at them.”

“The body-worn camera should indicate whether someone is in danger,” he added.

Marquell Bridges, an activist who works with Kohen Wiley’s family, called in a statement for the release of video footage of the shooting.

“His family deserves the truth. The public deserves transparency,” Bridges said. “We will not remain silent. We will not look away. And we will not allow the life of a black child to be treated like it means nothing.”

The death of a child stirs up latent tensions

The shooting is the latest in a series of incidents that have eroded trust between Senatobia police and the city’s black residents.

Last year, a Senate Officer threatened a Black woman with a Taser, pulling her from her car and knocking her to the ground and arresting her during a confrontation in an accessible parking space in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen was shot. Two years earlier, a Senate officer was fired for arresting a 10-year-old black boy for urinating in public.

Most recently, former Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired by the city’s Board of Aldermen after the New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News alleged he used racial slurs in private text messages.

Brook reported from New Orleans.