For several months, Residents of Senatobia, Mississippi, wait with a mixture of fear and anticipation as state authorities decide what action, if any, they plan to take in response to the killing of Cohen Wiley. Since a 1-year-old was shot and killed by a white police officer outside a local Walmart in June, organizers have held protests and press conferences outside the town’s city hall to demand accountability for the Black toddler’s disappearance and even briefly acknowledge the incident.
Senatobia residents got their answer Monday: Officials plan to do nothing. “The Attorney General’s Office believes the use of force was justified in this incident,” Mississippi Republican Rep. Lynn Fitch announced in a three-sentence press release posted on her official website.
The announcement sparked an outpouring of anguish and anger from people inside and outside the state. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus is asking for more information. “Kohen Wiley is a baby,” said state Rep. Kabir Karriem, MLBC chairman. “He posed no threat. He should be protected and he should have a future. His family has been left with more than a conclusion… Declaring the review complete does not discharge its responsibility to explain how the police encounter ended in the baby’s death.”
Alex Gilbert, press secretary for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, wrote in a letter to The Intercept on Tuesday that the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is “responsible for conducting a thorough and impartial investigation.” The email said the investigation “remains open and active.” But in a subsequent phone call, Gilbert said “the investigation involving the officer has been concluded.”
Gilbert reiterated the agency’s previous statement that body camera footage and other investigative information would be made available through public records requests. But she added that no information would be released until officials meet with Willie’s family. “We will meet with the family later this week,” she said.
However, as recently as Monday, the family insisted they had received no communication from the state. Cohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, told Mississippi Today she learned of the attorney general’s decision on Facebook, but no one has contacted her. The outlet also reported last month that despite the investigation being completed and on the attorney general’s desk as of mid-September, no one had interviewed Cohen’s mother, Vel’lesiya Wiley, who was holding her child in her lap when Cohen was shot and killed by police. This raises questions about whether the investigation is as “thorough” as authorities claim. When asked by The Intercept whether the MBI investigation had attempted to interview Wiley, Gibert said he could not comment.
Media identified the man who killed Baby Kohen as a Senatobia police sergeant. Hunter Foster shot into the car in which Willie was riding on June 14. The exact circumstances leading up to the shooting remain unclear. Police said officers responded to a call about a shoplifting at the Walmart; through a public records request, The Intercept released a two-page log of the incident that contained no information about the shooting but noted that the items allegedly stolen were baby clothes and a pack of Pampers.
In a video posted to social media shortly after her child was killed, Wiley said she got into the passenger seat of a Ford Fusion after the driver, Latoya Ferrell, was stopped as he left the store. Police allege the women tried to run away; according to Wiley, when she saw the officer approach with a gun, she said, “I put my baby up” to warn him that he was in the car. Then police shot him. Ferrell was also hit and taken to the hospital, but survived.
The Senatobia Police Department immediately claimed the car drove toward the officers, nearly hitting them — a claim quickly echoed by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. But so far, officials have not released any evidence to support this claim. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump took over the family’s case, hiring an outside pathologist to perform an external examination of the child and review visual evidence. In July, medical examiners concluded based on the appearance of the injuries and the path of the fatal bullet that the officer shot the baby from the side of the car, undermining the police version of events.
The attorney general’s announcement reignited long-running calls for the footage to be released. At a press conference earlier this month, Patrick Lumumba, a local activist on the Senate Accountability and Transparency Committee, accused the state of tailoring the investigation to support a lie — that Wiley and Ferrell intentionally tried to hit Foster with a car.
“If the video footage proves it, they will release it the next day,” he said.
kill Kohen Wiley brought national attention to Senatobia, a small city south of Memphis, Tennessee. City leaders have mostly refused to talk about the killings, except for a brief scripted video released by Mayor Greg Graves a few days after the shooting. By the time Cohen’s family laid him to rest in late June, the police account had prompted many in and outside Senatobia to blame Cohen’s death on Cohen’s mother, amid rumors that authorities would not charge the police but the mother and the driver.
For years, black residents have raised alarms about the way police treat adults and children, leading to the deaths of children. In a series of high-profile incidents, a 10-year-old boy was jailed for urinating in public, and two sisters, aged 13 and 14, were violently arrested outside a public housing complex. According to the girls and their mother, then-Police Chief Richard Chandler personally ordered one of the girls to “get your black ass off the road” before forcing her to the ground. On Mother’s Day 2025, in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen Wiley was shot and killed, a female officer forced a woman who was sitting in a handicap parking spot out of her car in front of her young child.
In the summer of 2025, a Senate committee fired Chandler and replaced him with interim police chief Harold Vanderford, a move that, as one city council member said, was aimed at restoring trust. But the killing of Cohen Wiley shows that, in fact, nothing has changed.
Senatobia residents, including a former law enforcement officer, told The Intercept that the institutional culture brought in by Chandler remains entrenched and Senatobia officials have shown contempt and disregard for the community. City records also show the chief pushed the city to pass new ordinances that would bring revenue to the police department and strengthen penalties for misdemeanors such as loitering.
At several Board of Aldermen meetings this summer, Lumumba and other activists reminded city leaders that they had warned officials about the dangers Senatobia police posed to black residents. Meanwhile, Mississippi Today uncovered evidence of Foster’s history of racist comments. Just days before Foster shot Cohen Wiley, he was accused of making racist comments to a black co-worker who later left the police department. Foster remains on active duty and is on paid leave.
Then, in late August, Mississippi Today exposed racist text messages sent by Vanderford himself. The text messages, which date back to the summer of 2025, contain more than a dozen uses of the N-word. City leaders initially tried to cover up the scandal: Vanderford claimed the messages were created by artificial intelligence, and after a closed-door meeting, the mayor and members of the Senatobia Board of Aldermen announced that Vanderford would stay on. However, individual city councilors publicly refuted this. On Sept. 1, Vanderford attempted to resign, but the board announced it had voted to fire him. Vanderford was replaced by Senatobia Police Lieutenant Angelica Metz, a Black woman.
In a statement announcing his appointment as interim chief on Sept. 5, Metz did what the police department had failed to do before: “express our heartfelt condolences to the family of Cohen Wiley and everyone in the community affected by this tragic loss.”
In a separate statement on Monday, after the attorney general declared the use of force justified, Metz acknowledged that the community “may have questions, concerns and strong emotions, and we respect everyone’s right to peacefully express their views.”
With body camera footage likely to be released in the coming days, Senatobia begins a new round of waiting. Meanwhile, the Senate Accountability and Transparency Committee released a statement on social media.
“This is more than just a news story for us. It’s personal – many of us are residents of Senatobia and parents of vulnerable children. … We are human beings and need time to grieve, reflect and process what has happened.”