JACKSON, Miss. — The police shooting of a 1-year-old boy during a response to a shoplifting report this week has intensified long-standing friction between law enforcement and Black residents in Senatobia, Mississippi.
The child, Kohen Wiley, is the latest focus of anger in a town of about 8,000 where residents say troubling police encounters have fueled distrust for years. His death has sparked protests and renewed demands for accountability, with civil rights advocates arguing it reflects yet another case in which a Black life was lost over items of little value — reportedly stolen diapers.
“We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child,” Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in an Instagram statement Wednesday. “That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse.”
Conflicting versions of events
Major questions remain about the shooting and the chain of events that preceded it.
Police in Senatobia were called Sunday to a Walmart on a shoplifting complaint, where officers encountered two women and a child leaving the store, getting into a vehicle and driving off. In a statement, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said officers tried to stop the car, but the driver moved toward them and nearly hit one officer. An officer then fired a weapon, and the vehicle left the area, according to the agency.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, said her son and her friend, who was driving, were hit by gunfire. In a video posted on social media Wednesday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, Wiley said her friend was not driving toward the officers because they were “all on the right side and she was driving towards the left.”
She also disputes the shoplifting claim, saying in the video that she believes her friend paid for the diapers she was carrying.
Policing expert Ian Adams, who teaches criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said regardless of the circumstances, the officer should not have fired at the car.
“Modern policing knows that shooting into a moving vehicle is a very bad idea and one to be avoided at almost all costs,′ Adams said. For one thing, ”vehicles have other occupants, which is obviously a concern here in the current case.”
Shooting revives racial justice concerns
Kohen was Black, as are his mother and her friend, and the circumstances leading to Kohen’s death quickly drew comparisons to another Black mother shot during a response to a shoplifting accusation.
In 2023, Ta’Kiya Young, who was pregnant, was shot by police in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb, after they attempted to apprehend her. Police said Young, who was also the mother of two young sons, got into her car and accelerated in the direction of the officer who fired at her through the windshield. Both Young and her unborn daughter were killed.
The officer in that case was acquitted of criminal charges and found justified in his use of force by a review board.
The two deaths join a long list of other instances of Black Americans dying in interactions with police after accusations of petty criminal offenses. That list includes the murder of George Floyd in 2020, who was killed after police responded to a call that he used a fake $20 bill at a Minneapolis grocery store.
For some racial justice advocates, such cases serve as a constant reminder of the consequences of systemic racism in law enforcement.
“In the name of ‘law and order,’ a child was killed and family was shattered over items that could be restocked, written off, and replaced,” King wrote on Instagram. “Our charge is clear: until the sacredness of human life is the starting point of every police encounter, we must demand changes in training and work unrelentingly to reform policies around police accountability.”
Tensions in Senatobia
Marquell Bridges, the president and founder of an advocacy group called the Building Bridges Coalition and who has been helping the Wiley family, said Kohen’s death was “just the breaking point” after years of problematic interactions between Black residents and police.
Bridges pointed to an encounter last year in which an officer threatened Breshari Faulkner with a Taser, pulled her from her car onto the ground and arrested her during a confrontation over a handicapped parking space in the same Walmart lot where Kohen was shot.
Two years earlier, in 2023, a Senatobia officer was fired for his role in arresting a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in a different parking lot. The boy’s family settled a federal lawsuit with the city earlier this year.
“There is a culture there that they are above the law – just because they wear a uniform,” said civil rights attorney Carlos Moore, who has represented the 10-year-old boy and others accusing the department of misconduct.
Police did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. The mayor and city aldermen also did not respond to messages.
About 40% of the city’s population of approximately 8,300 is Black, according to 2020 Census data. Police did not respond to questions about the racial makeup of the department, but the mayor and a majority of the Board of Alderman members are white. The city has elected only three Black aldermen since it became a municipality in 1860, according to the Tate Record, a local newspaper.
A toy lawnmower that blows bubbles
The officer who shot Kohen and the woman driving the car he was in has been placed on administrative leave, a standard practice, while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation looks into what happened. They have promised to release video of the shooting once the investigation is complete.
Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, was there when Kohen was born and babysat him often. She described him as a happy little baby with “the prettiest smile you could ever imagine.”
She said he was a sweet child and: “He just loved on me, and I loved on him. We loved each other.”
One of his favorite toys was a little lawnmower that would blow bubbles when pushed. Roberson would sit outside with him while he played with it. “He really thought he was mowing my yard,” she said, laughing a little at the memory. “That baby was my world.”
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Loller reported from Nashville, Tennessee. Jack Brook contributed from New Orleans. Aaron Morrison contributed from New York City.
