The death of 1 year old Kohen Wiley during a shoplifting response in Senatobia has sparked protests.
The death of a 1 year old boy, shot by police during a response to a shoplifting call at a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi, has rocked the small town of roughly 8,300 people and drawn an outpouring of grief and anger from across the country.
Kohen Wiley was shot Sunday when officers responding to a report of stolen diapers attempted to stop a vehicle carrying the boy, his mother and another woman. According to a statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the driver moved the vehicle in the direction of officers, nearly striking one, prompting an officer to open fire. The vehicle then fled the scene.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, disputes that account. She says the officer or officers were positioned to the right of the vehicle and that the car was not driving toward them. She also contests the underlying shoplifting allegation, saying she believes her friend had paid for the diapers in question.
The officer involved has been placed on administrative leave while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation conducts its inquiry. Authorities have said they will release video footage of the incident once the investigation is complete.
Competing accounts and unanswered questions
Policing experts have weighed in on the use of force itself, regardless of how the vehicle was moving. Ian Adams, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina, said that discharging a weapon at a moving vehicle is widely regarded in modern policing as something to be avoided in nearly all circumstances, in part because vehicles typically carry additional occupants who face serious risk from gunfire.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Wiley family, shared a video Wednesday in which Kohen’s mother described the moments before the shooting and the aftermath in which she and her friend were struck by gunfire.
Bernice King, daughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., addressed the case on social media, writing that prioritizing merchandise over a child’s life represents not just a failure of policing policy but a broader moral failure. She called for urgent reforms in police training and accountability measures.
A community’s breaking point
For many Black residents of Senatobia, Kohen’s death did not arrive in isolation. It landed on top of a documented history of troubling encounters between local police and Black community members that activists say has gone unaddressed for years.
Among the incidents cited is a 2025 confrontation in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen was shot, in which an officer used a Taser on Breshari Faulkner and pulled her to the ground during a dispute over a handicapped parking space. Two years before that, in 2023, a Senatobia officer was fired after arresting a 10 year old Black boy who had urinated in a parking lot. That boy’s family reached a settlement in a federal lawsuit against the city earlier this year.
Advocacy leaders working with the Wiley family describe Kohen’s shooting as a breaking point the moment when years of accumulated grievance became impossible to contain. Civil rights attorney Carlos Moore, who has represented multiple clients accusing the department of misconduct, said there is a culture within the department that suggests officers believe the badge places them above accountability.
The city has not responded to requests for comment. According to 2020 Census data, approximately 40% of Senatobia’s population is Black, though the mayor and a majority of the Board of Aldermen are white. Local records indicate the city has elected only three Black aldermen in its entire history as a municipality.
About Kohen Wiley
Before Kohen Wiley became the center of a national conversation about race and policing, he was a baby boy who loved a toy lawnmower that blew bubbles when he pushed it across the yard.
His grandmother, Veronica Roberson, who was present at his birth and cared for him regularly, described a joyful child with a smile she said was unlike anything she had ever seen. She would sit outside with him while he played with his toy, watching him go through the motions of mowing the lawn with complete seriousness and delight.
For Roberson, and for the community now gathered around makeshift memorials outside the Walmart where he was shot, Kohen was not a symbol or a statistic. He was a baby who had just begun to discover the world.