A lawyer representing the family of Kohen Wiley, a 1-year-old boy killed when a police officer fired into a vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call, has called for the release of body-worn camera footage after Mississippi’s attorney general said the shooting was justified. In a brief statement on Monday, Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said it had completed a review of the June 14 shooting and would not bring criminal charges against the Senatobia police officer involved in the shooting. The conclusion of the state’s review comes months after Kohen’s shooting death prompted protests and calls for justice in the town of Senatobia.
It was the latest in a string of incidents involving police officers and Black residents that outraged the Senatobia community. Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney who is representing Kohen’s family, said that authorities have still not released video footage of the encounter to support the attorney general’s finding that the shooting was justified. Crump added: “If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it.
We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.” Crump previously said that the results of an independent autopsy indicated the shot that killed Kohen was fired from the vehicle’s passenger-side window, contradicting officers’ claims that the car was moving toward them. Martin Zummach, an attorney who represents the officer who fired the shot that killed Kohen, told the that the attorney general’s findings cleared his client of criminal wrongdoing. He said the driver of the vehicle had “tried to kill” his client and other officers who were present.
Newsweek has contacted Crump and Zummach for comment via email. The shooting occurred on June 14 as Senatobia officers responded to a shoplifting call at a Walmart, where they saw Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, carrying her son as she left the store with a friend, got into a car and began driving away. Wiley and her friend are Black.
Police believed they had stolen diapers and baby clothes, but Kohen’s mother denied she or her friend stole anything. Neither has been charged. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) said in a statement shortly after the shooting that officers had “attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.” The statement said that an officer “then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene.” Wiley said she was leaving the Walmart with her son and her friend when her friend was stopped by police.
"I kept walking because it had nothing to do with me," she said in a video posted on X. Wiley said her friend then got into the vehicle, but as her friend began to reverse the vehicle, she lifted up her son “trying to show them that he was in the car” because police officers drew their guns. "By the time I sat my baby back down, it was like three or four shots.
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