Mississippi authorities released video Thursday showing the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by a police officer who opened fire while dodging the car driven by a family friend. A state investigation found no criminal wrongdoing by the officer, but the family’s attorney says it was wanton use of force.
Kohen Wiley was killed in June when Senatobia police officer Sgt. Hunter Foster fired his gun into a moving vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call. Kohen’s family says footage of the fatal encounter shows the shooting was not justified.
The Mississippi Attorney General’s office said this week its monthslong probe found that Foster’s use of force was appropriate. Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said his client had “no choice” but to shoot at the vehicle because it was going to hit him.
Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Kohen’s family, said Foster was not in danger when he fired the shot that killed the 1-year-old. Crump said the video shows Foster fired that shot from the passenger side of the car.
Kohen's close relatives watched the footage shot during the June 14 encounter in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Memphis, Tennessee. The video included footage from the camera worn by the officer who shot and killed Kohen.
Kohen would have celebrated his second birthday in early November, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Kohen’s family, said during a news conference Thursday.
“The word ‘justified’ has haunted me,” Kohen's maternal grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said during the news conference. “There’s no justification for that.”
Roberson said she found out from reading the news that the state had cleared the officer, and she also saw parts of the video that had been leaked online Wednesday. She called the lack of notice from the attorney general's office and the leak of the footage a “slap in the face” to her family.
Video shows multiple angles of the fatal encounter
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety on Thursday released footage showing the shooting from the body-worn cameras of multiple law enforcement officers, including Foster. Darkhorse Press, a Mississippi crime and community news outlet with a focus on law enforcement, posted some of that footage on its website a day earlier. The organization’s founder, Therese Apel, is formerly the department's communications director.
The group of officers were at the Walmart store in response to an unrelated incident, according to a Mississippi Bureau of Investigation report. A Walmart employee then alerted them of two women running from the store.
The videos show Kohen's mother Vellesiya Wiley, holding Kohen as she and her friend run across the parking lot and enter their vehicle. Five officers approach the parked car with guns drawn. The car reverses away and crashes into a parked vehicle nearby as officers yell for it to stop.
The vehicle then accelerates forward as Foster steps toward it, directly in front, with his gun drawn. The wheels turn away from him, and he appears to put his hands on the hood as he jumps out of the way. He fires his gun, shattering the window of the front passenger side, where Kohen was seated on his mother's lap. The car continues to drive away before the video cuts out.
Attorney for Kohen Wiley’s family says officers’ actions were reckless
Crump said the officers’ response — running at the vehicle with guns drawn to apprehend alleged shoplifters — was excessive and reckless.
Vellesiya Wiley previously denied that she and her friend stole diapers from the store and they have not been charged, according to state and county court records.
“Diapers are something a mother needs for a child. Diapers should never cost a baby their life,” Crump said. “This decision sends a message that a Black baby boy, his life, is not as valuable as the white diapers that he is wrapped in.”
Zummach, who represents Foster, has said the footage vindicates his client because it shows he was in danger from the moving vehicle.
“She came right at Hunter Foster and the other officer and he had to shoot his weapon,” Zummach said.
Vellesiya Wiley has disputed that her friend, who was driving, headed toward the officers.
Crump said the footage shows the fatal shot came from the side of the car, disputing that Foster was in imminent danger. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family concluded the same. An image of the vehicle shows its shattered right front passenger window. The family’s legal team called for the federal government to investigate the shooting.
Zummach said it was “strictly muscle memory” that prompted Foster to fire additional shots.
"The one that went through the side glass that everybody’s going crazy about? That’s because she was moving so fast,” Zummach said.
“Your brain can’t talk to your finger that fast to stop,” he added.
Experts provide conflicting analysis
John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force against moving vehicles, had a similar explanation for the third shot after reviewing the footage, saying it takes a second or two for someone to recognize they should stop shooting. But, he said, Foster shouldn’t have drawn his firearm and positioned himself in from of the car in the first place.
“He should never have placed himself in a position where he could have been struck,” Gross said, adding that an accusation of shoplifting did not justify “use of deadly force on a fleeing suspect.”
Gross said that as the car accelerated, he moved out of the way, “So, he can’t claim he was in danger of being struck by the car when he fired. It was already moving past him.”
But Charles “Joe” Key, a former Baltimore police lieutenant who frequently serves as an expert witness in police use-of-force cases, said the driver of the car appeared to use the vehicle to commit assault with a deadly weapon. Vellesiya Wiley’s friend, who was driving the vehicle, has not been charged.
“The officer that fired the shots narrowly escaped being run over and appeared to touch the car as he was moving,” Key said. “The shooting was objectively reasonable.”
Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden contributed from Seattle.
