For months,<\/span> the residents of Senatobia, Mississippi, have waited with a mix of dread and anticipation for state authorities to decide what, if anything, they plan to do about the killing of Kohen Wiley. Ever since the 1-year-old child was shot by a white police officer outside a local Walmart in June, organizers have held protests and press conferences outside the town\u2019s city hall, to call for accountability \u2014 or even a simple acknowledgment \u2014 for the loss of the Black toddler.<\/p>\n On Monday, Senatobia residents got their answer: Officials plan to do nothing. \u201cIn this incident, the Attorney General\u2019s Office found the use of force was justified,\u201d Republican Mississippi AG Lynn Fitch announced<\/a> in a three-sentence news release posted on her official website.<\/p>\n The announcement was met with anguish and outrage from people inside and outside the state. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus demanded<\/a> further answers. \u201cKohen Wiley was a baby,\u201d said state Rep. Kabir Karriem, who chairs the MLBC. \u201cHe posed no threat. He deserved protection, and he deserved a future. His family is owed more than a conclusion. \u2026 Announcing that a review is complete does not fulfill the responsibility to explain how a police encounter ended with a baby dead.\u201d<\/p>\n The attorney general\u2019s decision followed a probe into the case by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which was \u201cresponsible for conducting a thorough and impartial investigation,\u201d as Mississippi Department of Public Safety Press Secretary Alex Gibert wrote to The Intercept on Tuesday. The email said that the probe \u201cremains open and active.\u201d But in a subsequent phone call, Gibert said that the investigation \u201cinvolving the officer is closed.\u201d<\/p>\n Gibert reiterated what the agency has previously said: that body camera footage and other investigative materials will be made available through public records requests. But she added that nothing will be released until after officials meet with Wiley\u2019s family. \u201cWe are meeting with the family later this week,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As recently as Monday, however, the family maintained they had received no communication from the state. Kohen\u2019s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, told<\/a> Mississippi Today that she found out about the attorney general\u2019s decision on Facebook and that no one had reached out. The outlet also reported last month<\/a> that, although the investigation was complete and on the attorney general\u2019s desk as of mid-September, no one had interviewed Kohen\u2019s mother, Vel\u2019lesiya Wiley, who was holding her child in her lap when he was shot dead by police. This called into question whether the investigation is as \u201cthorough\u201d as authorities have claimed. Asked by The Intercept whether the MBI investigation sought to interview Wiley, Gibert said she could not comment.<\/p>\n The man who killed Baby Kohen, as the child is now known, was identified by the press as Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, who fired his gun into the car where Wiley was riding in the passenger\u2019s seat on June 14. The exact circumstances that led to the shooting remain murky. Police said that officers responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart; a two-page incident log released to The Intercept via a public records request contained no information about the shooting but noted that the items allegedly stolen were baby clothes and a pack of Pampers.<\/p>\n In a video posted on social media shortly after her child was killed, Wiley said she got into the passenger\u2019s seat of the Ford Fusion after the driver, Latoya Ferrell, was stopped on her way out of the store. Police accused the women of trying to flee; according to Wiley, when she saw officers approach with guns drawn, she said, \u201cI raised my baby up\u201d to warn that he was in the car. Then the police shot him. Ferrell was also struck and was hospitalized, but survived.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Senatobia Police Department immediately claimed that the car drove toward police, almost hitting them \u2014 an account swiftly echoed by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. But to date, officials have released no evidence to support this account. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who took the family\u2019s case, hired an outside pathologist to do an external examination of the child and to review visual evidence. In July, the medical examiner concluded<\/a>, based on the appearance of the injuries and path of the fatal bullet, that the officer shot the baby from the side of the car, undermining the police\u2019s version of events.<\/p>\n The announcement by the attorney general has renewed long-standing calls for video to be released. In a press conference held earlier this month, local activist Patrick Lumumba of the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency accused the state of tailoring its investigation to support a lie \u2014 that Wiley and Ferrell deliberately sought to strike Foster with the car.<\/p>\n \u201cIf video footage would prove that, they would have released it the next day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The killing of<\/span> Kohen Wiley drew national attention to Senatobia, a small city just south of Memphis, Tennessee. City leaders mostly refused to address the killing, save for a brief, scripted video released by Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves a few days after the shooting. By the time Kohen\u2019s family laid him to rest in late June, the police narrative had prompted many inside and outside Senatobia to blame Kohen\u2019s mother for his death, with rumors suggesting that, rather than charge the police officer, authorities would charge the mother and driver.<\/p>\n The child\u2019s death followed years of warnings by Black residents over the police\u2019s treatment of adults and children alike. Among the string of high-profile incidents was the jailing<\/a> of a 10-year-old boy for public urination, as well as the violent arrest<\/a> of two sisters, 13 and 14, outside a public housing complex. According to the girls<\/a> and their mother, then-police chief Richard Chandler personally ordered one of the girls to \u201cget your Black ass out of the road\u201d before forcing her to the ground. And on Mother\u2019s Day 2025 \u2014 in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen Wiley would be shot dead \u2014 a female officer forced a woman<\/a> out of her car in front of her young children for sitting in a handicapped parking space.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2025, the Senatobia Board of Aldermen dismissed Chandler, replacing him with interim police chief Harold Vanderford, a move aimed at restoring trust, as one alderman put it. But the killing of Kohen Wiley revealed that, in reality, nothing had changed. <\/p>\n Residents of Senatobia, including one former law enforcement officer, told The Intercept that the institutional culture brought by Chandler remained entrenched, with Senatobia officers showing disdain and disregard for the community. City records also showed that the chief had pushed the city to adopt new ordinances that would bring in revenue for the police department, while expanding punishments for misdemeanors like loitering.<\/p>\n At several board of alderman meetings over the summer, Lumumba and other activists reminded city leaders that they\u2019d warned officials about the danger posed to Black residents by Senatobia police. At the same time, Mississippi Today revealed evidence that Foster had a history of racist remarks. Just days before he shot Kohen Wiley, Foster was accused of making racist comments<\/a> to a Black colleague, who later left the police department. Foster is still on the force, on paid leave.<\/p>\n Then, in late August, Mississippi Today exposed<\/a> racist text messages sent by Vanderford himself. The text messages dated back to the summer of 2025 and contained more than a dozen uses of the N-word. City leadership initially tried to sweep the scandal under the rug: Vanderford claimed<\/a> that the messages were created by AI and, after a closed-door meeting, the mayor and members of Senatobia\u2019s board of aldermen announced that Vanderford would stay on. But individual aldermen pushed back publicly. On September 1, Vanderford tried to resign, only for the board to announce that they had voted to fire him. Vanderford was replaced by a Black woman, Senatobia Police Lieutenant Angelica Maze.<\/p>\n In a statement accepting the appointment as interim chief on September 5, Maze did what the police department had previously failed to do: express \u201cheartfelt condolences to Kohen Wiley\u2019s family and to everyone in the community who has been affected by this tragic loss.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Mississippi](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_2112_3e5a75-e1785435499126.jpg?fit=3817%2C1908\")