Audio articles are automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story; however, this audio has not been reviewed for accuracy and may contain errors. Read more about how we use AI to increase access to our reporting. Mukta Joshi is a reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a ye ar as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow. Joseph Cranney is a reporter at Verite News. Both report for the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The Times. SENATOBIA – The Mississippi police officer who fatally shot a Black toddler in a Walmart parking lot this summer had a history of aggressive behavior and escalating traffic stops into violent confrontations, an examination of more than a dozen incidents captured on video reveals. The videos show the officer, Hunter Foster, quickly ramping up encounters that began over minor infractions: resorting to physical force without warning, cursing at people and sometimes pointing his gun at them. Kohen Wiley, 1, was shot and killed in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Miss. Credit: Veronica Roberson Foster came under scrutiny in June when he and four other officers ran out of the Walmart in Senatobia and surrounded a car as two young women tried to flee. Foster ran and stood in front of the car and then opened fire as it drove toward him, video shows, and continued to fire as it passed him. One of the bullets struck and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was sitting in his mother’s lap in the passenger seat. Foster was the first officer to point his gun at the car, and the only one to open fire. In October, Attorney General Lynn Fitch declined to bring charges against Foster, 33, saying in a press release that the officer’s actions had been justified. He resigned from the police department later that week. The death of a Black toddler at the hands of Foster, a white police officer, was another episode in what many residents describe as a painful history of policing in the state. It also raised questions about the proportionality of the police officers’ response. The women had been accused by employees of shoplifting a box of Pampers Easy Ups and baby clothes. Reporters for The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News interviewed Foster’s former colleagues and reviewed lawsuits, court records and police reports to catalog other incidents in which he used force over his seven-year career in law enforcement. A memorial for 1-year-old Kohen Wiley outside the Walmart in Senatobia, Miss., where the toddler was fatally shot. Credit: Rory Doyle/The New York Times The examination included video from 12 incidents from his time at the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, the only agency among Foster’s former employers that provided detailed records in response to a public records request. Reporters also reviewed video footage included in two federal lawsuits Foster was named in, and from an incident flagged by community members in which Foster shouted profanities at a group of women when responding to a report of domestic violence. Foster was patient and polite at the beginning of most of the encounters, even when the motorists he had pulled over were unruly or intoxicated. But several incidents quickly devolved into violence, with Foster tackling, punching or drawing his Taser or firearm in response to minor provocations. The encounters reviewed by the news organizations represent a small sample of Foster’s interactions with the public. But three policing experts who separately examined the videos at our request said they raised questions about Foster’s aggression,  temperament and professionalism. Foster’s behavior displayed “an orientation toward going to force almost without warning,” said Michael Gennaco, a former federal civil rights prosecutor who now operates a police oversight consultancy in California. In several of the videos, Gennaco said, Foster appeared “out of control.” In one case, Foster tackled a man after he didn’t immediately put his hands behind his back, then punched him at least 14 times while he was pinned to the ground. In another, Foster continued to yank on a man’s arm while he screamed in pain. Foster was attempting to detain him after detecting a discrepancy with his vehicle tags. After reporters shared a detailed summary of this article’s findings, Foster’s lawyer, Martin Zummach, briefly replied that some of the characterizations of his client’s behavior was slanderous, though he didn’t respond to a list of questions, or follow-up phone and email messages. Zummach has described the Walmart shooting as “unfortunate,” but maintained that Foster did not know there was a child in the car, and that he had acted in defense of himself and other officers. In most of the cases reviewed by the news organizations, Foster filed reports to explain why he felt physical force was necessary. Those descriptions did not always line up with what video evidence showed. And the Walmart parking lot incident was not the first time that Foster said a vehicle had posed a threat. He was one of several officers named in a lawsuit accusing them of falsifying incident reports to say that a driver, who officers later beat, had accelerated his car, “almost running” one of them over. But video shows the car never drove toward, or nearly hit, any of the officers.  In court papers, Foster, who did not participate in the beating, denied knowing that any part of his report was inaccurate. The lawsuit was settled in 2022 for an undisclosed amount. ‘Traumatic, traumatic experience’ Foster grew up in northeastern Mississippi, the son of a longtime law enforcement officer. He went to high school about an hour east of Starkville, in Caledonia, where he was a lineman on the football team. He spent several years in the Army National Guard before switching to law enforcement in 2019, working for three departments over the next seven years in northern Mississippi.  Hunter Foster, right, received an award from the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office in 2023, when he worked there as a deputy. He later went to work for the Senatobia Police Department. Credit: DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office via Facebook Most of Foster’s former coworkers and supervisors declined to answer our questions, citing the sensitivity of the fatal shooting. Two of his former colleagues in Senatobia described Foster as a good officer with an even demeanor. An ex-girlfriend with whom Foster shares a child said he was “a good person and an amazing father,” but declined to answer more questions. “It seems like everyone has already painted an awful picture of him,” she said.  From 2021 to 2024, Foster worked at the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, where he built a reputation as a prolific patrol officer. Two years in a row, he won an award for issuing the most DUI citations of any officer in the state of Mississippi. In one month in 2022, he wrote more than 150 traffic citations, an average of about seven per workday, court records show. Laterrius Inge was violently detained by Hunter Foster in 2022 after pulling over with car trouble. Credit: Rory Doyle/The New York Times On a Sunday afternoon in 2022, Laterrius Inge encountered Foster on a county road just outside Memphis. Inge said the used Camaro he recently purchased had started jerking, so he pulled over. Foster pulled up just as Inge popped open the hood. Body-worn camera footage shows the two chatting calmly at first, but things change after a dispatcher informs Foster that the license plate on the car doesn’t match the Camaro, and that he can’t be identified by the name he had given. Without warning, Foster reaches out to cuff his left hand. Inge asks why he is being detained. Instead of answering, Foster repeatedly says “Stop,” raising his voice, the video shows. “I ain’t did nothing! What are you doing?” Inge asks, raising his right hand in surrender. Foster, still holding Inge by his handcuff, points his Taser, threatening to shock Inge if he doesn’t turn around. Foster then grabs Inge by his arm and shoves him against the car. Inge crumples to the ground and wails in pain for nearly 10 minutes, repeatedly screaming, “My wrist!” At one point, footage shows, Foster drags Inge by his handcuffs across the pavement, tearing his hoodie. Inge With Captions Foster later wrote in his report that he had dragged Inge to get him on his stomach, but that he kept rolling on his back, refusing to give up his right arm. Matt Steffey, a criminal and constitutional law professor at Mississippi Christian University who helped draft the state’s rules on criminal procedure, said the video could be “a training video on how not to conduct a traffic stop.” He noted that the officer did not ask Inge to put his hands behind his back before cuffing or dragging him. Inge was charged with careless driving, failure to surrender his driver’s license, being an uninsured motorist and having a switched tag. In an interview, he said that Foster had caused a shoulder injury that still requires treatment. “It was a traumatic, traumatic experience,” he said. ‘Why are you beating me up?’ Experts who reviewed the footage said that Foster appeared to have escalated some situations without cause or warning. One night in 2023, he stopped a man named Jonathan Fields on the side of a highway over an improper vehicle tag. Footage from the incident was captured on the squad car’s dashboard camera. Foster asks if Fields has a gun in the car. He says that he does, and Foster asks where it is. (Mississippi is an open carry state.) In his incident report, Foster wrote that Fields had “grabbed the firearm.” The action isn’t clear from the footage, but Fields can be heard saying, “I was just trying to show you where it’s at.” Audio from the footage captures Foster berating and cursing at Fields for touching the gun. Then, the officer tells him to step out of his Chevrolet sedan. When Fields doesn’t immediately exit, seven seconds later, Foster draws his gun and points it at Fields until he complies, the footage shows. Fields Intro With Captions A few moments later, Foster tells Fields not to move while he questions him about having marijuana in the car. When Fields takes a few steps toward his car, a second deputy tells him to stop. When he does, the officer tries to handcuff him, Fields waves his hands away, and Foster tackles him to the ground. In his incident report, Foster later wrote that the man had “ripped” his arms away from the other deputy. Foster punches Fields at least 14 times while the other officer holds him down. “Why are you beating me up?” Fields yells. Fields With Captions In his use-of-force report, Foster called his punches “distractive,” delivered when he felt Fields tense his body, which he interpreted as part of an effort to fight back. Steffey, the law professor, noted that Foster began striking Fields before asking him for his hands. “That looks like assault,” Steffey said. Another night, in 2023, Foster pulled over an Uber driver for failing to dim his high beams. Footage shows officers eventually ordering a passenger out of the car, too, after Foster said he smelled marijuana. Then, all of a sudden, Foster shoves the passenger face down toward the hood of a squad car, grabbing the back of his neck. Alexander With Captions The second officer pulls the man’s hands above his head while instructing him to put his hands behind his back. In the ensuing struggle, Foster punches him at least six times, including before giving the man any clear commands.Barbara Attard, a policing consultant and former Independent Police Auditor for the city of San Jose, said Foster’s use of force that day was “totally inappropriate” and “excessive.” Four months later, Foster arrived at a scene where two other officers were trying to get a man out of his car in his driveway. Within 13 seconds of arriving, Foster opens the door and pulls the unarmed man from his vehicle, tackling him to the ground, dashboard camera footage shows. Washington With Captions Foster later curses at the man for attempting to record the interaction on his cellphone. ‘Can you please stop cussing?’ By the time Foster started working in Senatobia, the city of roughly 8,400 people — 40 percent of whom are Black — was already reeling from a string of policing controversies. In 2023, the city’s chief of police, who is white, was caught on camera barging into a Black man’s home and choking him. The chief at the time said officers had believed a fleeing suspect to a shooting was hiding there. The same year, the department faced criticism after its officers arrested a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in a parking lot. The chief said that officers had violated their training. The following year, two Black teenage girls accused the chief of shouting “get your Black ass out of the road” when he arrested them outside a public housing complex. The year after that, a Black woman was thrown to the ground by an officer after she parked in a handicapped spot in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen was later killed. City leadership voted to remove the chief. So when news broke in June that a white officer had killed a Black toddler in a dispute over shoplifting, many residents saw the incident as part of a pattern of racist policing.  Things intensified in August when The Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News obtained internal department complaints alleging that Foster had used racially offensive language toward his colleagues. In September, we revealed the police chief at the time had routinely used racist slurs in texts to a colleague. That chief was pushed out too. Kenesha Herron was outside a home in Senatobia in May when Hunter Foster approached her and other women and launched into an expletive-filled tirade. She is wearing a shirt for Kohen Wiley. Credit: Rory Doyle/The New York Times Experts noted that Foster frequently stopped Black motorists over minor infractions, like not having a license plate light, then accused them of drug use before searching them and their cars. Those actions carry the hallmarks of pretextual stops, which some states have placed heavy restrictions on, though not Mississippi. Experts agreed that the most problematic incident they reviewed was in response to a domestic call in early May that was captured on body-worn camera footage and recently obtained by reporters. Within a minute of arriving at a home in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Senatobia, where a woman had accused her child’s father of hitting her, Foster launches into an expletive-filled tirade. Upon learning the man accused of assault had left, Foster immediately raises his voice at her and other women standing outside, who are Black, calling them a “bunch of motherfuckers.” Johnson With Captions “Can you please stop cussing?” Kenesha Herron, the mother of the man who had left, asks. “No, ’cause I’m sick of this shit,” he says. He accuses the group of women, who are standing with two children, of trying to hide the man. “I’m tired of y’all doing this,” Foster says. “Tired of who doing what?” Kenesha Herron, the man’s mother, asks, having interpreted Foster’s comment as being racially motivated. She later said in an interview that she had “never felt so openly hated” because of her skin color. Moments later, Foster tells other officers he’s sick of “this place,” adding another expletive, video shows. “He’s the kind of officer that is to blame for the fact that communities of color have no confidence in public safety,” said Gennaco, the former civil rights prosecutor.Foster’s body-worn camera footage shows him apologizing to Herron after their altercation. “I’m sorry for being loud with you,” he says. “Sometimes things get heated.” Sheelagh McNeill of The New York Times and Julie Lee of Mississippi Today contributed reporting. ...read more read less