Mississippi police shooting kills one-year-old boy
Pursuit after alleged diaper theft ends in Walmart parking lot gunfire, bodycam footage withheld during state investigation
Images
A memorial with balloons and stuffed animals in front of a Walmart.
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The family’s legal team have said the police were called over allegedly stolen diapers.Andrea Morales for NBC News
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From left, attorney Van Turner, Kohen's parents, and young pallbearers at the funeral for Kohen Wiley in Pope, Miss., on Saturday.Stu Boyd II / The Commercial Appeal/USA Today Network via Reuters
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A one-year-old boy, Kohen Wiley, died 13 days after being shot by police in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi, according to NBC News. The shooting followed a shoplifting call involving allegedly stolen diapers, and the family buried the child after a funeral at Hosanna Family Worship Center in nearby Pope.
According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers saw two subjects and a juvenile child flee from the store into a vehicle, and an officer opened fire after authorities said the driver nearly struck an officer. Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, told NBC News she was a passenger in the car and said the driver — described as a friend and not publicly identified — was not trying to hit anyone while attempting to drive away. The driver was critically injured in the shooting.
The case now sits in the gap between what police say happened in a few seconds and what the public is allowed to see afterward. Civil rights attorneys Van Turner and Ben Crump, who are representing the family, have called for the immediate release of body-camera footage. Authorities have said the footage will not be released until the investigation is complete, a position that effectively turns the timeline of accountability into an investigative choice rather than a fixed procedural step.
At the funeral, mourners wore shades of blue in tribute, and family members described a child who had just begun walking. Turner told the service there was no justification for a baby’s death over stolen diapers, and attendees echoed calls for “Justice for Baby Kohen.” NBC News reports that some people at the visitation and funeral spoke of strained relationships with Senatobia police, and that the department has faced accusations of overpolicing in recent years.
Even without the video, the bare outline shows how quickly a low-level retail call can become an armed confrontation in a public parking lot. When officers are trained to treat flight as escalation, and departments face few direct costs for aggressive tactics beyond reputational damage, the predictable output is that more encounters are handled as emergencies. The bill then arrives later: medical trauma, litigation, community mistrust, and an investigation whose pace is set by the same institutions under scrutiny.
Kohen Wiley’s relatives said goodbye in a church service led by Rev. Keri Henson under Pastor Fred Butts. The body-camera footage that could settle basic disputes about the moment shots were fired remains unreleased.