Kohen Wiley shooting: Mississippi AG says force justified

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch will not bring criminal charges against the Senatobia police officer who fired into a car outside a Walmart on June 14, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley as his mother held him in the front passenger seat. In a brief statement released Oct. 19, Fitch’s office said it “found the use of force was justified.”

The decision came before investigators had released any body camera footage of the shooting. Some of that footage has since appeared online. Video from the officer who fired was not in it. The boy’s mother and the friend who was driving deny shoplifting, and neither woman has been charged with a crime.

What the attorney general decided

The attorney general’s statement is short. It says the office reviewed the June 14 incident in Senatobia, that it involved one officer with the Senatobia Police Department, and that the review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation under Section 45-1-6 of the Mississippi Code. It does not name the officer or explain how the office reached its conclusion.

Fitch’s finding means no charges will be filed against the officer, CBS News reported. Senatobia Interim Police Chief Angelica Maze said in a department statement that the attorney general’s office “is declining prosecution of this matter and will close the case,” Fox13 Memphis reported.

State officials have not formally identified the officer who fired. The officer’s attorney, Martin Zummach, told The Associated Press that the findings cleared his client of criminal wrongdoing and that the driver “tried to kill” his client and other officers. “He had no choice but to fire his weapon,” Zummach said, according to the AP report published by PBS NewsHour.

What the video shows

Footage surfaced online after the decision. It was posted by Darkhorse Press, and CBS News said it verified the video but did not obtain it on its own. The Mississippi Free Press described the release as a compilation of selected angles: body camera video from two officers, Walmart surveillance video of the store’s exterior and entrance, and body camera footage recorded outside the hospital where Kohen was pronounced dead.

According to CBS News, the footage shows five officers running out of the store after being told a shoplifter was trying to drive away. They surrounded a silver sedan and repeatedly shouted for the driver to stop the car. CBS reported that the driver drove forward and nearly hit an officer, and one officer then fired into the car.

The Mississippi Free Press offered a more detailed account. It reported that a Walmart employee in a security room warned the officers that two people were running. As officers ordered the driver to stop, the car backed up, hit a parked vehicle and accelerated while turning left. The officer who fired first tried to put a hand on the hood, then stepped aside and fired several shots through the windshield and the right-side window, the outlet reported.

The leaked footage does not include the period between the gunfire and the officers’ arrival at the hospital. A Department of Public Safety spokesperson, Alex Gibert, confirmed to the Free Press that body camera video from the officer who fired exists and was part of the investigation.

What happened on June 14

Accounts differ on key points. This is the sequence as reported.

The shoplifting call. Senatobia officers responded to a report of shoplifting at the Walmart in the town, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Police believed Vellesiya Wiley and a friend had taken diapers and baby clothes, the AP reported. Wiley denies that, and neither woman has been charged. The Mississippi Free Press identified the friend as Latoya Ferrell.
Leaving the store. Officers saw Wiley carrying her son as the two women left the store and got into a car, according to the AP. Ferrell was driving. Wiley has said she was holding her son in the front passenger seat, Mississippi Today reported.
Officers surround the car. Five officers surrounded the sedan as it began to leave its parking space. As officers drew their weapons, Wiley lifted her son to show there was a child in the car, the Mississippi Free Press reported.
The shots. In a statement issued the day of the shooting, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said the driver “drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” and an officer fired into the vehicle. Kohen was struck. Ferrell was also hit and badly wounded, the AP reported.
The hospital. Kohen was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police, CBS News reported.

Wiley has disputed that Ferrell drove at officers. A preliminary independent autopsy found that Kohen was shot from the side of the car, not the front, according to Ben Crump, the family’s attorney, the AP reported.

Both women are Black, the AP reported.

The debate over shooting at moving vehicles

Whether officers should ever fire at a moving car has been argued over in American policing for more than 50 years, and federal and professional guidance has moved toward tight limits.

The Justice Department’s own use-of-force policy for federal agents, which does not bind local departments like Senatobia’s, says “firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles.” It allows agents to fire at a moving vehicle only if someone inside is threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle, or if the vehicle is being driven in a way that threatens death or serious injury and “no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.”

The Police Executive Research Forum, a police research and policy organization, goes further. In 2016 it adopted a ban on shooting at or from moving vehicles as one of its 30 Guiding Principles on Use of Force. The group’s policy says agencies should prohibit it “unless someone in the vehicle is using or threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle itself.”

PERF often points to New York. The New York Police Department adopted a similar restriction in 1972, and police shooting incidents fell from 994 that year to 665 the next, a 33% drop, according to an account by the late police executive John Timoney that the group has published.

The ban has critics inside policing. Lexipol, a police policy and training company, and Police1 have both published pieces criticizing PERF’s prohibition. John P. Gross, a use-of-force expert, told the AP the shooting was “almost certainly unjustified.” He said that if the car was moving toward officers, the best practice would have been for them to get out of the way, the AP reported. Zummach’s position is that the driver put officers’ lives at risk.

What the family and city say

“I watched my baby take his first breath and I watched my baby take his last breath,” Vellesiya Wiley said at a news conference in June, CBS News reported.

Crump condemned the ruling in a statement on Oct. 19. He asked how anyone could accept the finding when Kohen’s family and the public had not been allowed to see the body camera footage. “If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it,” he said. “We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”

Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said she learned of the decision on Facebook and that no state or local official had contacted the family, Mississippi Today reported. Several witnesses, and Wiley herself, said as recently as this month that investigators had never interviewed them, the outlet reported.

After the shooting, Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves said, “We are committed to transparency throughout this investigation,” according to CBS News. In a Facebook post, the city said it “continues to extend its deepest sympathy to Kohen Wiley’s family and all those affected by this tragedy,” Mississippi Today reported.

The department has faced other turmoil since the shooting. Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired in September after news reports revealed he had used racist slurs in private text messages, Mississippi Today reported.

What comes next

The Department of Public Safety said it planned to release the video after Kohen’s family views it. CBS News reported the official release was expected at the end of this week. Gibert told the Mississippi Free Press that the department intends to release all available footage within days.

The broader case is not entirely over. Because the Department of Public Safety has not closed its case, charges against Ferrell or Wiley remain possible, the Mississippi Free Press reported. As of Oct. 21, neither woman had been charged.