After the Mississippi
attorney general cleared a white cop for firing into a car and killing a Black toddler in a Walmart parking lot, video footage released by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety has revealed the fullest picture to date of what happened.
The videos, provided to The Intercept in response to a public records request, come on the heels of leaked footage that exposed how a needlessly aggressive and reckless police confrontation of two suspected shoplifters led to 1-year-old Kohen Wiley’s violent death in his mother’s arms.
While the newly released videos include redacted versions of the previously leaked footage — including body camera footage for some of the officers, as well as Walmart surveillance video — the new footage reveals for the first time the body camera video belonging to the Senatobia police officer who fired the shots that killed Kohen Wiley: Sgt. Hunter Foster.
While the state concluded that the shooting was “
justified
” based on a probe by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the videos show how police escalated a non-life-threatening situation — one that could have ended with a mere shoplifting charge — by pursuing Kohen’s mother, Vel’lesiya Wiley, and the driver, Latoya Ferrell, after they ran from the store and tried to drive away.
Foster’s body camera footage makes clear that he positioned himself in front of the vehicle, aimed his gun at the car, and fired the fatal shot into the passenger side window after the car was moving past him and posed no threat.
This is consistent with the conclusions of Dr. Roger Mitchell, a forensic pathologist hired by Kohen Wiley’s family, who
determined
in June that the fatal bullet was most likely fired into the side window, entering his small body on his right side and exiting his left.
The release also includes a 10-page, heavily redacted investigative
report by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation
, which the state attorney general relied upon in
concluding
… [more]
