Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Kohen Wiley’s Family Says Investigators Didn’t Contact Them Before Concluding Cops Did No Wrong

Mississippi has yet to release any support for its claim that a “thorough and impartial” review showed the shooting was “justified.”

For months, the residents of Senatobia, Mississippi, have waited with a mix of dread and anticipation for state authorities to decide what, if anything, they plan to do about the killing of Kohen Wiley. Ever since the 1-year-old child was shot by a white police officer outside a local Walmart in June, organizers have held protests and press conferences outside the town’s city hall to call for accountability — or even a simple acknowledgment — for the loss of the Black toddler.

On Monday, Senatobia residents got their answer: Officials plan to do nothing. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified,” Republican Mississippi AG Lynn Fitch announced in a three-sentence news release posted on her official website.

The announcement was met with anguish and outrage from people inside and outside the state. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus demanded more information. “Kohen Wiley was a baby,” said state Rep. Kabir Karriem, who chairs the MLBC. “He posed no threat. He deserved protection, and he deserved a future. His family is owed more than a conclusion. … Announcing that a review is complete does not fulfill the responsibility to explain how a police encounter ended with a baby dead.”

The attorney general’s decision followed a probe into the case by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which was “responsible for conducting a thorough and impartial investigation,” as Mississippi Department of Public Safety Press Secretary Alex Gibert wrote to The Intercept on Tuesday. The email said that the probe “remains open and active.” But in a subsequent phone call, Gibert said that the investigation “involving the officer is closed.”

Black Residents Warned of Abusive Cops for Years. Then Police Shot and Killed a Toddler.

Gibert reiterated what the agency has previously said: that body camera footage and other investigative materials will be made available through public records requests. But she added that nothing will be released until after officials meet with Wiley’s family. “We are meeting with the family later this week,” she said.

As recently as Monday, however, the family maintained they had received no communication from the state. Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, told Mississippi Today that she found out about the attorney general’s decision on Facebook and that no one had reached out. The outlet also reported last month that, although the investigation was complete and on the attorney general’s desk as of mid-September, no one had interviewed Kohen’s mother, Vel’lesiya Wiley, who was holding her child in her lap when he was shot dead by police. This called into question whether the investigation is as “thorough” as authorities have claimed. Asked by The Intercept whether the MBI investigation sought to interview Wiley, Gibert said she could not comment.

The man who killed Baby Kohen, as the child is now known, was identified by the press as Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, who fired his gun into the car where Wiley was riding in the passenger’s seat on June 14. The exact circumstances that led to the shooting remain murky. Police said that officers responded to a shoplifting call at the........

© The Intercept