The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office has ruled that a police officer’s fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy during a Walmart parking lot confrontation was justified.
The finding, announced Monday, came one day before the release of body camera footage showing five Senatobia officers chasing a grey sedan through the retailer’s lot on June 14. Kohen Wiley, the toddler who died, was riding inside the vehicle with his mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and her friend, Latoya Ferrell, when gunfire erupted.
Hunter Foster, an officer who pursued the car, was placed on administrative leave during the investigation, according to mississippitoday.com. While Foster has not been directly identified as the shooter, he was the only officer at the scene put on leave, the outlet reported.
The footage, captured by body cameras worn by two officers and by surveillance cameras, shows the sedan reversing and nearly striking one officer before slamming into a parked vehicle. Officers surround the car as one shouts, “Stop the car right now!” The driver then accelerates toward the officers, and one cop opens fire as the vehicle appears to strike him.
“In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Monday.
The toddler was struck by a bullet in the right side of his torso, according to Ben Crump, the family’s prominent civil rights attorney. An independent pathologist ruled the shooting a homicide, Crump said at a press conference Monday.
“God help them if it’s not a life or death situation and you shot into a moving vehicle with an infant baby,” Crump said.
“How do do you justify that? You cannot justify that,” he continued, according to footage posted by kcbd.com.
Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd, Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor, added in a statement, “We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”
The child’s mother and Ferrell were both critically injured in the incident, officials said. A photo shows the car’s passenger window shattered by an apparent bullet and a hole in the windshield.
Police had suspected Wiley and Ferrell of stealing diapers and baby clothes from the Walmart, according to police records. Officers said they tried to stop the vehicle as the driver allegedly drove toward them, prompting the shooting, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said.
The shooting drew national attention to the Senatobia Police Department’s handling of the shoplifting call. The release of the body camera footage Tuesday intensified scrutiny of the officers’ decision to fire into a vehicle containing a young child.
