Fatal shooting of one-year-old boy ignites tensions in Mississippi town

Kohen Wiley. Photograph: Veronica Roberson/AP View image in fullscreen Kohen Wiley. Photograph: Veronica Roberson/AP Fatal shooting of one-year-old boy ignites tensions in Mississippi town Death of Kohen Wiley is latest in series of troubling police encounters that have outraged community members The recent fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by police who were responding to a shoplifting call has ignited simmering tensions between police and Black residents in the small town of Senatobia, Mississippi . The death of Kohen Wiley is the latest in a series of troubling encounters with police that have outraged community members in recent years. It has led to protests and calls for greater police accountability in the town of 8,000, with some civil rights activists pointing to Kohen’s death as another example of a Black life lost over something of nominal value. In this case, it was an allegation of stolen diapers, which the boy’s family has denied. “We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child,” Bernice King, the daughter of late US civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr, said in a statement posted to Instagram. “That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse.” Differing accounts of what happened There are still many unanswered questions about the shooting and what led up to it. Senatobia police responded to the shoplifting call at a local Walmart on 14 June, a Sunday, where they found two women and a child leaving the store, getting into a car and driving away. According to a statement released by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI): “Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene.” Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, said her son and her friend, who was driving, were hit by gunfire. In a video posted on social media on Wednesday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing her, Wiley said her friend was not driving toward the officers because they were “all on the right side and she was driving towards the left”. She also disputes the shoplifting claim, saying in the video that she believes her friend paid for the diapers she was carrying. Policing expert Ian Adams, who teaches criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said regardless of the circumstances, the officer should not have fired at the car. “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. For one thing, ”vehicles have other occupants, which is obviously a concern here in the current case.” Shooting revives racial justice concerns Kohen was Black, as are his mother and her friend. And the circumstances leading to Kohen’s death quickly drew comparisons to another Black mother fatally shot during a response to a shoplifting accusation. In 2023, Ta’Kiya Young , who was pregnant, was shot by police in a Columbus, Ohi