Mississippi's attorney general has ruled that a police officer who fatally shot one-year-old Kohen Wiley in June used justified force, a finding the toddler's family is disputing as they continue to demand the release of body-camera footage from the shooting.
Kohen was killed on June 14 while sitting on his mother's lap in the passenger seat of a car outside a Walmart in Senatobia, a small city roughly 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Officers had been called to the store over a report that diapers and baby clothes had been stolen, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says they tried to stop the vehicle as it was allegedly driven toward one of them, narrowly missing him, before an officer opened fire.
Kohen's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has denied that she or the driver, Latoya Ferrell — who was critically injured by the gunfire — were shoplifting or drove at police. She has said she lifted her son from her lap specifically to show officers a child was inside the car moments before he was shot.
"In this incident, the Attorney General's Office found the use of force was justified," Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote in a statement Monday. Neither Ferrell nor Wiley has been charged with a crime.
Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for the Wiley family, rejected the finding. "How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen's family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?" he said, adding: "If the footage supports the state's decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth." Police have not released any video from body cameras or store surveillance.
Martin Zummach, a lawyer representing the officer who fired the shots, said the driver had "tried to kill" his client, leaving him "no choice but to fire his weapon," according to local reporting on the case.
Kohen's death, which fell on the Juneteenth holiday marking the end of slavery in the US, set off protests in Senatobia; both women in the car and the toddler are Black, while the officer who fired is reportedly white. Last month the city fired its police chief, who is white, after local newspapers published text messages showing him repeatedly using racial slurs — a separate matter the family's supporters have cited as evidence of a department with deeper problems.
