Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said Monday that it found the use of force in the June 14 police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in Senatobia was justified, according to Newsweek and Truthout.
The state’s review, conducted by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, did not result in criminal charges against the Senatobia officer involved, those reports said.
The shooting happened in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, about 40 miles south of Memphis, after officers responded to a reported shoplifting call, according to the same reports and WREG. In the police version described by those outlets, the driver of the vehicle moved toward officers before an officer fired into the car. Kohen was inside the vehicle when he was fatally shot.
Family attorney Ben Crump has demanded the release of body-camera and surveillance footage, arguing the public has not been shown the evidence behind the attorney general’s conclusion. Newsweek reported that Crump said authorities still have not released video from the encounter.
WREG also reported that the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said surveillance video from the incident would be made available later this week, after the family has a chance to view it.
Later reporting from Darkhorse Press and The New York Times said newly surfaced video shows the vehicle backed up and then moved through a cluster of officers before the shooting, while a body-camera recording from a medical facility captured one officer saying, “I didn’t even see a f***ing baby in her lap.”
The case drew fresh calls for transparency from the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus, which said the public needs to see the video and a fuller explanation of how the review was conducted, according to the Clarion Ledger.
The latest state review keeps the focus on the still-unreleased footage and the unanswered question of why an encounter that ended with the death of a toddler was deemed justified.