A Mississippi police officer fired three shots into a parked car outside a Walmart and killed a one-year-old boy sitting in his mother’s arms, and the state’s top prosecutor says the shooting was justified.
Quick Take
- Senatobia officer Hunter Foster shot into a vehicle on June 14, 2026, killing one-year-old Kohen Wiley during a Walmart shoplifting response.
- Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office cleared Foster of criminal wrongdoing, citing insufficient evidence and calling the force justified.
- Family attorney Ben Crump points to an independent autopsy and body-camera footage suggesting the fatal shot came from the side, not the front.
- Foster resigned after the state released body-camera and Walmart surveillance video in late October 2026.
- Kohen’s parents protested outside the Attorney General’s office, demanding criminal charges and a fuller public accounting.
What The Released Video Shows
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety released three body-camera videos and two Walmart surveillance clips in October, giving the public its first look at the encounter. The footage shows Vellesiya Wiley holding her son Kohen as she and another woman got into the car during a shoplifting investigation. Officer Foster fired three shots while standing near the front or passenger side of the vehicle. One of those shots killed the child.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said its review found the vehicle had reversed, then accelerated forward and turned, appearing to move toward at least one officer before passing between them. Her office concluded there was “insufficient evidence of criminal conduct” and declined to charge Foster or any other officer involved.
A Family’s Autopsy Tells A Different Story
Kohen’s family hired its own medical examiner to review the shooting. Attorney Ben Crump said that independent autopsy found the fatal bullet entered from the side of the car, not the front, contradicting the idea that Foster fired head-on into an oncoming threat. Crump said the body-camera footage, once released, matched that side-angle conclusion rather than the state’s version of events.
That dispute matters because it goes to the heart of self-defense law. An officer facing a car bearing down on him from the front has a very different legal justification than one firing into the side of a vehicle that may already be past him. The side-angle claim, if confirmed by further forensic review, would complicate the state’s justification finding considerably.
The Officer’s Defense And His Resignation
Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said his client “had no choice” but to fire because the vehicle was coming directly at him. Zummach argues the released footage actually vindicates Foster by showing he was in real danger from a moving car during a chaotic, fast-developing moment in a parking lot. That account lines up with the Attorney General’s own stated reasoning for clearing him.
Foster resigned shortly after the Department of Public Safety released the footage publicly, and Senatobia’s interim police chief also stepped down around the same time. Neither resignation came with an admission of wrongdoing, and the Attorney General’s criminal clearance remains in place. The personnel moves read more as damage control than any shift in the legal outcome.
Why This Case Fits A Bigger Pattern
Police shootings at moving vehicles are not a rare legal puzzle; they are a documented policy problem. Research examining the 100 largest U.S. police departments found that agencies with stricter rules against firing at moving cars had fewer such shootings overall, even after accounting for other factors. The Justice Department’s own use-of-force policy bars officers from discharging firearms “solely to disable moving vehicles” except under narrow, specific threat conditions.
That broader pattern explains why Kohen Wiley’s case will not stay confined to one Mississippi parking lot. Whether Senatobia’s department had, or followed, a restrictive vehicle-shooting policy is a fair question for the city and state to answer publicly, separate from whether Foster’s individual conduct met the bar for criminal charges.
What The Family Wants Next
Kohen’s parents protested outside the Mississippi Attorney General’s office, pressing for criminal charges against Foster and for a more transparent account of how the justification decision was reached. Fitch’s original statement offered little public detail on the legal reasoning behind clearing the officer, which only fueled the family’s demand for the full investigative file. An arrest or formal charge has not occurred, and none appears imminent under the current ruling.
The fight now likely shifts toward civil court, where the family’s attorneys can use subpoenas and depositions to get records the Attorney General’s office has not made public. Independent reconstruction of the shooting, full ballistic reports, and sworn testimony from everyone on scene would do more to settle the side-angle dispute than press conferences from either side ever could.
Police Officer Who Shot Dead One-Year-Old Kohen Wiley Resigns After State Rulinghttps://t.co/N2DqaCnBf4 pic.twitter.com/CJWK5yDLgG
— Fish 4 News (@Fish4NewsUK) October 28, 2026
A one-year-old is dead, an officer has resigned without facing charges, and two competing factual accounts of the same three gunshots remain unreconciled. That gap between an official finding of justification and a family’s independently documented doubts is exactly the kind of gap American conservatives should want closed with hard evidence, not silenced with a one-paragraph press release.
Sources:
people.com, pbs.org, bbc.com, ms.now, opus.govst.edu, sites.fordschool.umich.edu
