Attorney General clears Senatobia police officer who shot, killed Kohen Wiley

By Mukta Joshi | Originally published by Mississippi Today

Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. 

The Mississippi Attorney General’s office cleared the officer who shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley at a Walmart in Senatobia in June, according to a news release Monday.

Many details of the incident remain unknown, and it wasn’t immediately clear if or when law enforcement would release footage from the incident. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation initially said police fired at a vehicle that was driving toward officers in the Walmart parking lot, “almost striking” one, after a pair of women were accused of stealing a pack of diapers.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch “found the use of force was justified,” Monday’s brief statement said. The statement said “one officer” was involved, though it didn’t name the officer or share any more details about what happened. Other records identify the officer as Sgt. Hunter Foster.

A lawyer for the toddler’s family in July released a photo showing the car’s front side window shot out, which the lawyer said suggested police weren’t in the vehicle’s direct path.

Wiley was in the front passenger seat in his mother’s arms when Foster, who is white, opened fire. Wiley was Black, along with his mother and the vehicle’s driver, who was also injured by gunfire.

Vellesiya Wiley, Kohen Wiley’s mother, said in an interview in early October that she was never interviewed by MBI agents. Veronica Roberson, the toddler’s grandmother, said Monday she learned of the attorney general’s decision when she logged onto Facebook, and no state or local law enforcement official has reached out to the family.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article