Black legislators demand transparency from Mississippi law enforcement on fatal police shooting of 1-year- old in Senatobia  ...Middle East

Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about the center’s work here. Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at [email protected].

After two months of silence from law enforcement officials on the police killing in June of a 1-year-old boy in Senatobia, the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus is demanding “direct, timely and ongoing updates” on the state-run investigation meant to determine if any officers involved will face criminal charges.Veronica Shanell, the grandmother of Kohen Wiley, the Black toddler shot and killed by Senatobia police in a Walmart parking lot, said nobody from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had contacted the family. That includes Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, who was holding him in her arms in the front seat of a car when he was shot.

“I am asking if anyone seen something please say something. If anyone know somebody that was there please have them to inbox me,” Shanell posted on Facebook Monday. “I just want answers that’s all!”In an open letter published Monday, Rep. Kabir Karriem, chairman of the caucus, called the “lack of meaningful” communication by the authorities “unacceptable.”“Kohen’s family should not have to fight the State of Mississippi for information about the investigation into their child’s death,” Karriem, a Columbus Democrat, wrote in the two-page letter. It was addressed to state Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the MBI. Karriem’s letter demands that a liaison for information between the agency and the family “be established immediately.” Wiley, 20, has said that police fired three or four shots at the Ford Fusion driven by her friend, who was wounded in the shooting. The two of them were suspected of shoplifting a pack of diapers and baby clothes. Neither has been charged with any crime, Shanell said.

“Tell the family what can be shared, what cannot and what they should expect next,” Karriem wrote. ”But do not leave them in silence.”In records, the MBI said it had erroneously released, the name of a Senatobia officer, Sgt. Hunter Foster, was listed as the subject of its investigation. The Senatobia City Council placed Foster on leave two days after the June 14 shooting, but no one involved has said whether Foster fired his weapon.Foster, who is white, directed a racially offensive remark toward a co-worker two days before the shooting, according to an internal complaint Mississippi Today obtained last month.At a previous department, Foster was accused of exaggerating the risks that a car posed to officers during their response to a suspicious vehicle call, an incident that resulted in a federal civil rights lawsuit against that police department. 

Foster claimed that the driver had almost run over another officer, though surveillance footage shows no evidence that the car nearly hit, or even drove toward, any of the officers.Martin Zummach, a Southaven lawyer who has represented police accused of excessive force, said Monday that he had been retained to represent Foster following the Walmart shooting, but declined to discuss details of his actions.“I am very convinced that Hunter will be cleared of any allegations of wrongdoing in this unfortunate event,” Zummach said.

 In a statement released the day of the shooting, the MBI said that officers had attempted to stop the car, but that “the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.”An MBI spokesperson declined to say anything else on Monday about the actions of the police or the status of their investigation. At least one key witness has yet to be interviewed by law enforcement agents.Desirae Smith, an eyewitness, posted a video from the Walmart parking lot that showed officers scrambling on foot moments after the gunfire. The video was widely shared on social media along with her name and published by news outlets, including CNN, in late June. Smith said neither state investigators nor local law enforcement had contacted her.

“I just think they’re not bothered by it because ain’t nobody really bringing up the baby’s name anymore,” Smith said. “They’re just letting it fade away.”The Senatobia Police Department and the MBI have declined multiple requests to release footage of the incident captured on police body-worn cameras, though Tindell told Senatobia aldermen that his agency had obtained that footage. Walmart declined to release its surveillance footage, saying that it had been turned over to the MBI.Karriem said the case reveals “broader concerns” around Mississippi’s rules for releasing body-camera footage, a subject he pledged the Black Caucus would address during the next legislative session.

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