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Police body camera footage reveals the moment a Mississippi cop opened fire on fleeing shoplifting suspects in a Walmart parking lot — and shot dead a 1-year-old boy.
The state Attorney General deemed the use of force “justified” on Monday.
Little Kohen Wiley was tragically killed in June when a police officer fired shots into a car the boy was riding inside as the child’s mom was allegedly fleeing cops in Senatobia, according to law enforcement officials.
Footage released Tuesday shows five police officers bolting into a the Walmart parking lot as they chase a grey sedan with two women inside.
The vehicle reverses and nearly hits one officer, before slamming into a parked car.
As cops run toward it, one officer shouts, “Stop the car right now!” according to the footage.
Cops close in and surround the vehicle. The driver then accelerates toward the officers.
One cop then opens fire into the car as the vehicle appears to strike him, the footage shows.
Hunter Foster, an officer who chased the car, was placed on leave while authorities investigated his actions, according to mississippitoday.com
While Foster has not been directly named as the officer who opened fire, he was the only cop at the scene who was placed on leave, the outlet reported.
The stunning footage was captured on body cameras worn by two of the five officers and by surveillance cameras.
“In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Monday.
The toddler was struck by the officer’s bullet in the right side of his torso — and the shooting was ruled “homicide” by an independent pathologist, the family’s prominent lawyer, Ben Crump, said at a press conference Monday.
“God help them if it’s not a life or death situation and you shot into a moving vehicle with an infant baby,” Crump said.
“How do you justify that? You cannot justify that,” he said, according to footage posted by kcbd.com.
Crump — a civil rights attorney who famously represented the families of George Floyd, Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor — added in a statement, “We will not stop fighting until this family gets the truth.”
The gut-wrenching shooting unfolded after Senatobia Police officers responded to a shoplifting call at the store on June 14, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has said.
Police had suspected that the boy’s mom, Vellesiya Wiley, and her friend, Latoya Ferrell, were stealing diapers and baby clothes from the Walmart, according to police records.
Officers say they tried to stop the vehicle as the driver allegedly drove toward them, prompting the cop to open fire, the Bureau said.
The toddler was killed and the driver and Ferrell were critically injured, officials said.
A photo shows that the car’s passenger window was shattered by an apparent bullet and a hole in the windshield.
