'Mississippi Goddam': State AG Calls Police Killing of Toddler Kohen Wiley 'Justified'
"Kohen should be alive," said one civil rights attorney. "He and his family deserve accountability. The fight for justice continues."
Republican Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch on Monday declared the fatal police shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley “justified,” provoking outrage over a decision that civil rights advocates said underscores the enduring systemic racism in US policing and prosecution.
Wiley, who is Black, was killed on June 14 in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi as he sat in his mother’s arms inside a car. Police had responded to an allegation that his mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and another woman, Latoya Ferrell—the baby's aunt—had stolen diapers.
Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, who is white, opened fire on the car, striking Wiley and Ferrell, who was critically wounded. Neither woman has been charged, and authorities have not publicly released evidence establishing that a theft occurred.
“I watched my baby take his first breath, and I watched my baby take his last breath,” Wiley said after her son's killing.
A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE. Horror and racism from Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch as she announces that the police shooting of Black baby Kohen Wiley was "justified."
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— Indivisible Chicago Alliance ❌👑 (@indivisiblechicago.bsky.social) October 19, 2026 at 12:01 PM
Cellphone video footage showed a vehicle driving away from officers, but does not appear to capture the moment of the shooting. A photo of the car shows bullet holes in the windshield.
In a brief statement, Fitch's office said it had "completed the review" of the shooting and "found the use of force was justified."
The finding means that Foster will face no criminal charges.
"How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body camera footage?" national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Wiley family, said following Fitch's announcement.
"This is a department whose chief was fired after reports of racial slurs in his text messages, and whose officer faced a complaint alleging a racially offensive remark two days before he shot Kohen," he added. "If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth."
Last month, the city of Senatobia fired former Police Chief Harold Vanderford after text messages emerged in which he regularly used racial slurs.
Marquell Bridges, a Mississippi activist who is president of the Building Bridges Coalition, told the Mississippi Free Press Monday that “there is blood" on the hands of "not just Hunter Foster, but everyone that is complicit in the cover-up, including Attorney General Lynn Fitch."
Rev. Cornell William Brooks—a lawyer, civil rights activist, and professor—posted on social media, "BABY EXECUTION BY JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE."
"With the video, the public won’t buy this," Brooks added. "A fleeing alleged shoplifter does not justify shooting into a vehicle with a known 'baby on board.' Every alleged perception of danger doesn’t justify every Black death."
Writer and racial justice advocate Tanisha Long voiced her indignation in the words of a famous Civil Rights-era protest song from Jazz icon Nina Simone:
"Mississippi Goddam."
