By Leon Kwasi Kuntuo-Asare
In yet another devastating reminder of how cheap Black life remains in the eyes of the American legal system, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office has officially declared that the fatal police shooting of one-year-old Kohen Wiley was “justified.”
The tragedy unfolded on June 14 outside a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi. Officers responded to a call regarding an alleged shoplifting incident involving a stolen box of diapers. According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers claimed the driver of the fleeing vehicle drove toward them, prompting Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster to open fire.
That official story, however, completely breaks down under the weight of independent evidence and witness testimony. Eyewitnesses reported seeing no attempt to strike officers. More damning, civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner revealed that an independent autopsy shows the bullet that struck baby Kohen entered through the side of the vehicle, not the front. Shattered glass on the passenger-side window reinforces that Sgt. Foster fired from a position where he was clearly out of harm’s way.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, recounted desperately lifting her baby to show the officers who was inside the car before the shots rang out. Her cries were ignored, and her infant son was murdered.
This outcome is not an isolated incident; it is symptomatic of systemic, entrenched misconduct within the Senatobia Police Department. Records reveal Foster faced an internal complaint just two days prior for directing anti-Black slurs at a colleague. The department’s former police chief resigned following exposed text messages laced with racial slurs, and the department previously drew national condemnation for arresting a 10-year-old Black child for public urination.
Now, state officials ask our community to accept their conclusion while actively withholding body-camera footage from the family and the public.
As grassroots activists, citizen journalists, and members of the global African diaspora, we cannot remain silent while the state shields officers from accountability. True justice demands total transparency. We stand with the Wiley family in demanding the immediate release of all unedited body-camera footage.
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Mississippi Attorney General’s Office Says White Cop Was Justified in Killing 1-Year-Old Black Baby Over Alleged Stolen Box of Diapers
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