Mississippi releases footage of police shooting that killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley

Mississippi authorities have released footage of the encounter in which a police officer shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley in a Walmart car park. The recordings show the moments behind a state prosecutor’s decision to deem the officer’s use of force justified — a decision the child’s family disputes.

Kohen was on his mother Vellesiya Wiley’s lap in the front passenger seat when the shooting happened in Senatobia on 14 June. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety released recordings from several cameras on Thursday 22 October, including the body camera worn by the officer who fired, Hunter Foster.

According to accounts of the recordings by the BBC and Associated Press, five officers approached the car with guns drawn after a store worker alerted them to suspected shoplifting. The car reversed into a parked vehicle, then moved forward. AP reports that Foster stepped towards it, jumped aside as its wheels turned away from him, and fired as it passed. The front passenger window shattered.

Foster’s lawyer, Martin Zummach, told the BBC that the driver had been trying to kill the officers and that Foster had no choice but to shoot. The car’s movement towards Foster is visible in the accounts of the footage; the driver’s intention is not established by them. Kohen’s family disputes that the shooting was justified. Its lawyer, Ben Crump, has called the police response “excessive from the very start” and says the shot that killed Kohen came from the side of the car.

The attorney general’s office said on 19 October that Foster’s use of force was justified following an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Its brief public statement did not explain how it assessed the individual shots. That was a prosecutorial decision, not a court ruling.

Questions also remain about the officers’ tactics. Six experts consulted by Mississippi Today criticised officers for positioning themselves in front of the car; a passage of Senatobia police policy published by the outlet says an officer’s first responsibility is to move out of an approaching vehicle’s path. Those experts reviewed earlier leaked footage that the outlet described as incomplete. An attorney consulted by the outlet who defends police officers cautioned that video cannot fully convey an officer’s experience in the moment. AP also reported a former police lieutenant’s view that the shooting was objectively reasonable.

Mississippi Today said the leaked footage did not make clear whether the car struck an officer. The mayor confirmed to CBS News on Friday that Foster had resigned; Mississippi Today reported that city officials accepted his resignation on Wednesday, before the public video release. District Attorney Jay Hale told CBS his office would review the case before deciding whether to present anything concerning the driver to a grand jury. Neither she nor Kohen’s mother had been charged at the time of the reports.