Senatobia officer put himself in harm’s way before fatally shooting 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, experts say

By Sarah Whites-Koditschek and Mukta Joshi | Originally published by Mississippi Today

Sarah Whites-Koditschek and Mukta Joshi are investigative reporters at Mississippi Today spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellows. They can be reached at sarah.whites-koditschek@nytimes.com and mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

Multiple experts who reviewed video footage of the police shooting in Senatobia said officers unnecessarily escalated the encounter and put themselves in harm’s way in the moments before one of them fired into a car, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley.

Six experts, including a forensic reconstructionist and five consultants in police training and use of force, said at least one of the officers clearly put himself at risk when he stepped in front of the car while pursuing two women accused of taking a box of diapers and baby clothes from Walmart.

That decision goes against training widely provided to law enforcement officers, who are taught not to stand in front of a car in an attempt to stop someone from fleeing, the experts said. 

It also appears to violate Senatobia Police Department’s use-of-force policy, which says an officer’s “first responsibility” is “to move out of the path of an on-coming vehicle.” 

“It’s just a tragedy. It could have been avoided,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a group that advises police departments on use of force. “You don’t stand in front of the car, period. You stand off to the side.” 

Reporters for Mississippi Today and The New York Times asked six policing and use-of-force experts and an attorney who defends law enforcement to examine video footage that was collected by state law enforcement and leaked to a Mississippi news outlet this week. The footage is incomplete, but provides the most detailed insight so far into how officers came to shoot Kohen during what began as a routine shoplifting call in June.

Kohen’s death set off protests in Senatobia and sparked outrage across the country, in part because Kohen, who is Black, was shot by a white police officer, who Mississippi Today later found had been accused by two separate colleagues of making racially offensive comments toward them. 

In September, Mississippi Today revealed that Harold Vanderford, the department’s chief who had taken no action against Foster in either complaint, routinely used racist slurs in text exchanges with a colleague in the department. Vanderford was fired soon after.  

Foster resigned from his position at the department this week, and city leadership accepted his resignation late Wednesday.

A close examination of the footage, in consultation with the experts, raises questions about how the officers responded, and whether Foster’s life was in danger when the shots were fired. It also leaves critical questions unanswered, including what the officers knew about the women they were chasing and whether any of them knew a child was in the car.

Of those who reviewed the footage for Mississippi Today, only David Mastagni, an attorney who represents police, defended the officers’ tactics. He cautioned against judging their actions based on video footage, saying it appears far different than what an officer experiences in the moment. 

“It’s capturing from a perspective, and it has tranquility and hindsight and all that, where we can slow it down and look at it,” he said. 

The other six experts were unanimous in many of their criticisms.

In the video, the confrontation with the officers begins after Latoya Ferrell, Vellesiya Wiley and her son Kohen have gotten into a gray sedan parked outside Walmart. An unidentified officer runs up to their driver side window and tries to open the door as the sedan pulls backward out of a parking spot. 

One officer yells, “Stop,” and the car pauses before continuing backward and slamming into an S.U.V. 

Several experts noted that this is the moment when at least two officers pull out their guns. Russ Hicks, a police consultant, former instructor and assistant commander, said the officers drew their weapons before the car drove toward them.   

“What concerns me is taking out the gun so quickly in this kind of a case,” Hicks said. “Officers only draw their guns if they believe they’re going to use them.”

The officers then surround the car, with two of them, including Foster, standing in front, in the only possible path for the driver to flee. 

Hicks called this a critical mistake that put the officers, the car’s occupants and bystanders at risk. 

“This is a provocational tactic where they’re standing in front of the cars and now saying, ‘I need to use deadly force,’” Hicks said. 

When the car moves forward, Foster appears to be in its path. The video shows the car’s front wheels turning left at the last moment in an apparent effort to avoid hitting him. As Foster pivots out of the way, he fires his gun and the car passes between him and another officer. 

Several of the experts took issue with Foster’s decision to fire. They said shooting into a car – even if it is threatening an officer’s safety – is almost always inappropriate because killing the driver is unlikely to bring the car to a stop and protect the officer.

“If you hit the driver, now you have an unguided missile,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina. 

Foster shoots four times, according to the experts who reviewed the video.

The officer’s first shot was fired when his right leg was in front of the car’s bumper on the passenger side, said Jeremy Bauer, a forensic reconstruction expert. By the second shot, the officer’s left hip is lined up with the right passenger mirror and his chest is parallel to the passenger side.  

In the third shot, “We actually see the evidence that he shoots into the right front passenger window,” Bauer said. “We see glass shatter.”

The final shot was fired when Foster was standing near the rear tire, he said. 

Mastagni said officers often experience a delay between facing a threat and firing. 

“It’s not uncommon that the bullet strikes at a different spot on the car than where the officer was intending to shoot at the time that they perceived the threat,” he said. 

The publication of the leaked footage set off a social media firestorm, and multiple local news outlets reported in definite language that the car had struck two officers. But the experts said it was impossible for them to determine whether the vehicle had made contact with any of the officers based on their immediate review of the video.  

In a press conference Wednesday, Gov. Tate Reeves said it was “very clear and evident” that the driver had “attempted to run over” the officer. But Reeves said he had not watched the video. 

The leaked footage does show the car coming close to Foster’s leg as it turns left away from him, but he does not appear injured after it passes. While the car is in reverse, its front bumper comes close to another officer’s foot and leg as he steps to the side away from the vehicle.

Both he and Foster join the other officers in running to their cars to continue the pursuit.

The state’s attorney general, Lynn Fitch, announced her office had found the shooting to be justified, and would not pursue criminal charges against Foster. She did not provide the reasoning for her decision, saying only that there was insufficient evidence of criminal conduct to present the case to a grand jury. 

“The bar for criminal prosecutions is obviously high. It’s probably extremely high in Mississippi,” said Michael Gennaco, a former federal civil rights prosecutor and founder of the OIR group, a police oversight consultancy. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong, or ill-advised or tactically deficient.”

Gwen Dilworth contributed reporting. 

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

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