Newly obtained body-camera and surveillance footage offers a fuller account of the Mississippi police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, showing the car carrying him striking a sheriff’s deputy and appearing to hit the officer who opened fire. The footage emerged after the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office ruled that officers used justified force during the June 14 encounter outside a Senatobia Walmart. According to the outlet’s account, a security guard spoke with Wiley’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and the woman driving the car near the store’s exit before the women ran toward their vehicle. Mississippi cop involved in killing of one-year-old accused of saying racist remark just two days before (Photo: Kohen Wiley Family and DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office) The guard alerted officers inside, who ran into the parking lot and ordered the driver to stop. The driver pulled forward, then reversed, striking a sheriff’s deputy who appeared to limp afterward. The car circled, struck a parked vehicle and accelerated through officers, appearing to make contact with Foster as gunfire rang out, Darkhorse Press reported. The car continued moving as officers shouted for the driver to stop, Darkhorse Press reported. The footage adds details missing from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s initial account, which said the driver drove toward officers and nearly struck one. Foster fired into the vehicle, killing Kohen and critically injuring the driver. Doctors pronounced the toddler dead at a nearby hospital. A recording from a medical facility afterward captured Foster telling another officer that he had not seen the child, according to Darkhorse Press. “I didn’t even see a f*ing baby in her lap,” Foster said. “Nobody knew the baby was there,” the other officer responded. “All I saw was two females in the car.” “That’s all I saw,” Foster said. Wiley’s mother previously said she held up her son to show officers that a child was inside the vehicle. Her account and the officers’ recorded statements offer conflicting descriptions of whether officers saw Kohen before the shooting. The department placed Foster on leave two days after the shooting. The attorney general’s office took over the case in September. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified. Pursuant to Section 45-1-6 of the Mississippi Code, the review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,” the agency said in a statement. Shortly after Kohen’s death, his family hired attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner to represent them. Crump previously said an independent autopsy showed that the bullet that struck Kohen entered through the side of the car, challenging the suggestion that Foster stood directly in its path when he fired. “This police officer is shooting from the side,” Crump said. “You can’t get that shot from the front. Why would you shoot into a vehicle from the side where you’re clearly not in harm’s way?” Before Darkhorse Press published its account of the recordings, Crump criticized the state’s ruling and demanded that officials release the footage. “A 1-year-old baby was shot and killed by a police officer, and now the state of Mississippi says that use of force was justified. How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen’s family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?” Crump said in a statement to Atlanta Black Star. The shooting also drew scrutiny to Foster’s conduct before the encounter and the department’s history of controversial arrests involving Black residents. Just two days before the shooting, Foster called his co-worker, Dexter Smith, “a Black motherf–ker,” according to an internal complaint obtained by Mississippi Today. In 2025, a Senatobia officer pulled a Black woman from her car at the same Walmart after she parked in a handicap space with a handicap placard. In 2023, officers arrested 10-year-old Quantavious Eason for public urination, prompting the firing of an officer and a lawsuit. Former Police Chief Harold Vanderford also resigned after private text messages showed him repeatedly using racist slurs. “This is a department whose chief was fired after reports of racial slurs in his text messages, and whose officer faced a complaint alleging a racially offensive remark two days before he shot Kohen,” Crump said in his earlier statement. “If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it. We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.” New Video Reveals Chaos Before Mississippi Cop Shot a Black Baby Dead, Then Walked Free ...read more read less