Kohen Wiley would have turned 2 on Tuesday. On Monday, his parents stood in the lobby of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office and asked to speak to the woman who decided that the police officer who killed him will not be charged.
They did not get the meeting. They got the lobby, and a chant: “our baby’s life mattered.”
Kohen was Black, 1 year old and sitting on his mother’s lap on June 14 when Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster fired into a moving car in a Walmart parking lot, about 40 miles south of Memphis. Officers had been called about a shoplifting report. Body-camera footage described by the Associated Press shows five officers approaching with weapons drawn as Vellesiya Wiley ran to the car holding her son. The car reversed, then moved forward, and Foster shot through the front passenger window where Kohen was seated.
Fitch’s office ruled on Oct. 19 that “the use of force was justified.” Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said his client had “no choice” because the vehicle threatened to hit him. Vellesiya Wiley disputes that the driver steered toward officers and says she told police her child was in the car before the shots.
Kohen’s father, Davion Williams, wants Foster prosecuted and Fitch removed from office. “It’s hard,” he said Monday. “It’s just hard to even express and talk about.”
The family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, has put the problem in a sentence: “How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?” Mississippi officials showed the family unredacted footage in a private screening on Oct. 22, but the video has not been released to the public despite records requests, the Mississippi Free Press reports.
That secrecy sits on top of a department with a record. The Mississippi Free Press reports that Foster faced earlier complaints, including allegations of racially offensive remarks days before the shooting, and that Senatobia’s police chief was later fired over racist text messages. The family has asked the Justice Department for a federal investigation. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus has demanded that Fitch explain how she reached her decision and that Senatobia’s police practices get an independent review.
This is how accountability fails in a state where one office investigates the shooting, clears it and then defends the clearance. Fitch has not explained, in terms a grieving family or a skeptical public can test, how a toddler held in his mother’s arms became a risk that justified gunfire. A ruling nobody can check against the video is not a finding. It is a verdict handed down in the dark.
The footage should be released, and the Justice Department should open the investigation the family has asked for. Kohen’s second birthday is Tuesday. His parents will spend it without him, and without an answer.
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