JACKSON, Miss. — The fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by a police officer responding to a shoplifting call has reignited long-standing tensions between law enforcement and Black residents in Senatobia, Mississippi, a town of roughly 8,000 people.
The child, Kohen Wiley, was killed Sunday after Senatobia officers were dispatched to a local Walmart regarding a shoplifting complaint. According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers located two women and a child leaving the store, entering a vehicle, and driving away. The agency’s statement says officers tried to stop the car, but the driver allegedly steered toward the officers, nearly striking one of them. An officer then fired their weapon, and the vehicle fled the scene.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, told a different story. In a video shared on social media Wednesday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, she said her friend was not driving toward the officers, stating that the officers were “all on the right side and she was driving towards the left.” Wiley also disputed the shoplifting allegation, saying she believes her friend had paid for the diapers in question.
Kohen’s death has drawn widespread outrage, including from Bernice King, daughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. In a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday, King said: “We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child. That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse.”
Policing expert Ian Adams, who teaches criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the officer should not have opened fire on the vehicle under any circumstances. “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, adding that “vehicles have other occupants, which is obviously a concern here in the current case.”
The shooting has drawn comparisons to the 2023 death of Ta’Kiya Young, a pregnant Black woman who was shot by police in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb following a shoplifting accusation. Authorities said Young accelerated her vehicle toward the officer who fired through her windshield, killing both her and her unborn daughter. The officer in that case was acquitted of criminal charges and cleared by a review board.
Civil rights advocates have also linked Kohen’s death to a broader pattern of Black Americans losing their lives in police encounters stemming from minor alleged offenses — including the 2020 murder of George Floyd, who died after police were called because he allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill at a Minneapolis grocery store.
King wrote on Instagram: “In the name of ‘law and order,’ a child was killed and a family was shattered over items that could be restocked, written off, and replaced. 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.”
Marquell Bridges, president and founder of the Building Bridges Coalition, has been assisting the Wiley family and said Kohen’s death was “just the breaking point” after years of what he described as troubling interactions between Black residents and local police.
Bridges pointed to a prior incident in which an officer threatened a woman named Breshari Faulkner with a Taser, pulled her from her vehicle, and arrested her during a dispute over a handicapped parking space in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen was shot. Two years before that, in 2023, a Senatobia officer was fired for his role in the arrest of 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.
Civil rights attorney Carlos Moore, who has represented the 10-year-old boy and others accusing the department of misconduct, said: “There is a culture there that they are above the law — just because they wear a uniform.”
Senatobia police did not respond to requests for comment. The mayor and city aldermen also did not reply to messages seeking comment.
According to 2020 Census data, approximately 40% of the city’s population of around 8,300 is Black. The department did not respond to questions about its own racial makeup, but the mayor and a majority of the Board of Aldermen are white. According to the Tate Record, a local newspaper, the city has elected only three Black aldermen since it became a municipality in 1860.
The officer who fired the shot has been placed on administrative leave — a standard procedure — while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation conducts its review. Investigators have said they will release video footage of the shooting once the inquiry is complete.
Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, was present when he was born and frequently cared for him. She remembered him as a joyful child with “the prettiest smile you could ever imagine,” adding: “He just loved on me, and I loved on him. We loved each other.”
One of his favorite toys was a small lawnmower that blew bubbles when pushed. Roberson recalled sitting outside watching him play with it. “He really thought he was mowing my yard,” she said, laughing softly at the memory. “That baby was my world.”
