Kohen Wiley was 1 year old when police gunfire killed him in his mother’s arms outside a Mississippi Walmart. More than four months later, Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office has declared the officer’s use of force justified. Its public explanation runs three sentences.

The Oct. 19 announcement identifies an incident in Senatobia, announces the finding and references the state investigation. It does not name Kohen. It does not describe the threat officers faced or explain how investigators evaluated the danger to the child.

A decision this consequential requires an explanation the public can examine. Instead, Mississippi has announced its conclusion while leaving fundamental questions about the killing unanswered.

What happened to Kohen Wiley?

Officers responded to a shoplifting report at the Senatobia Walmart on June 14. Police records described allegations involving baby clothes and diapers. The encounter ended with Kohen dead and another person wounded.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said officers encountered two adults and a child entering a vehicle. According to the bureau, the driver then drove toward officers and nearly struck one. An officer fired into the car. That alleged vehicle threat forms the central justification in the state’s initial account.

Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, disputed that account, according to The Associated Press. She denied that she or her friend stole anything and rejected the allegation that the driver headed toward officers.

Neither woman had been charged when the Mississippi Free Press reported the clearance. Authorities also had not publicly released evidence substantiating the shoplifting allegation.

Those distinctions matter. Readers should not mistake an allegation of theft for an established fact. Nor does the allegation explain why officers fired into a vehicle containing a child. The state’s case depends on what happened during the encounter and whether the evidence supports its account of danger.

The public received a conclusion before the evidence

The missing explanation follows months of sparse disclosures.

In July, Mississippi Today obtained a two-page police report that omitted basic details. It did not identify the responding officers, establish how many were present or explain why the encounter escalated into gunfire.

The department had pledged transparency after the shooting. Yet the released report offered little basis for understanding the decisions that ended Kohen’s life.

As the Mississippi Free Press reported Oct. 19, the state had not released body-camera footage or Walmart surveillance video. DPS said it would provide footage to news organizations through public-records requests. That commitment now needs a concrete timetable.

A circulating bystander recording does not fill the gap. As Mississippi Today’s July reporting explained, it shows the car leaving after the shooting, rather than the sequence that prompted officers to fire. It cannot settle the central dispute about the vehicle’s movement before the shots.

The distinction between an investigative file and a press release is substantial. Investigators may possess evidence that supports the clearance. The public cannot assess that evidence while it remains undisclosed.

Releasing it should serve more than the announcement of a decision already made. It should allow the family, journalists and the public to test the explanation against the record.

The family’s forensic findings require an answer

The family has presented evidence challenging the state’s account.

A preliminary independent autopsy reviewed by the family’s attorneys described a bullet entering the right side of Kohen’s chest and exiting the left. Forensic pathologist Dr. Roger Mitchell performed the examination.

Attorney Ben Crump also cited injuries consistent with glass fragments striking Kohen. He argued that the findings supported a shot passing through a side window, undermining the suggestion that the shooter stood in the vehicle’s path.

Those findings deserve scrutiny without overstating their reach. A bullet’s path through a person does not, by itself, establish every officer’s location or the vehicle’s movement. An officer could also claim to have acted to protect someone else.

That makes a complete reconstruction essential. Where was each officer? How was the car moving? What did the recordings show before each shot? How did investigators reconcile the physical evidence with the accounts they received?

Fitch’s announcement answers none of those questions. The family’s evidence should receive a specific, evidence-based response.

His mother says investigators never interviewed her

An account from someone inside the vehicle raises another serious concern.

Mississippi Today reported that Vellesiya Wiley said in early October that MBI agents had never interviewed her. She was holding Kohen in the front passenger seat when the shooting occurred.

His grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said she learned about the clearance through Facebook. She also said no state or local law enforcement official had contacted the family.

These are attributed statements from family members, not independently verified findings about the investigative file. They nevertheless demand a direct response.

Investigators should explain whether they sought Wiley’s account, whether she provided a statement through another channel and how they evaluated her description. The public should not have to guess whether investigators heard from a central eyewitness.

A family learning of such a decision through social media also raises a basic question about how the state treats the people most affected by its work.

Fitch’s own numbers broaden the scrutiny

Kohen’s case sits within a much larger record of police-shooting reviews.

In a Sept. 28 statement, Fitch’s office said it had completed 86 reviews since receiving that responsibility. It reported finding officers’ force justified without further action in all but four.

That amounts to 82 of 86 reviews, or approximately 95%. The figure comes from the attorney general’s office itself and predates the announcement about Kohen. It should not be treated as an independently audited tally.

The percentage alone cannot establish that any particular decision was wrong. Cases differ, and some uses of deadly force withstand rigorous scrutiny. Evaluating the record requires the underlying facts, the legal reasoning and information about which cases reached grand juries.

However, the office’s language in another shooting case deserves attention.

On Sept. 28, a jury acquitted former Capitol Police officer Steven Frederick Jr. of manslaughter in the death of Jaylen Lewis. Jurors could not reach a verdict on Michael Lamar Rhinewalt, who fired the fatal shot. Fitch’s office then chose not to retry Rhinewalt.

Explaining that choice in its official statement, the office said:

“the benefit of the doubt goes to our law enforcement officers and we will not seek to retry this case.”

The statement characterized that consideration as something officers had earned through their service.

Every criminal defendant deserves the presumption of innocence. Prosecutors also must assess whether the evidence supports another trial. But an explanation invoking a defendant’s uniform leaves a consequential question: Did the office reach its decision because of the evidence, or did police status receive additional weight?

Fitch’s office should explain its standards clearly enough for the public to distinguish those possibilities.

Other children, other decisions

Mississippi has faced questions about police shootings of children before.

In May 2023, Indianola Officer Greg Capers shot 11-year-old Aderrien Murry in the chest during a domestic-disturbance response. Murry survived. Fitch’s office presented evidence to a Sunflower County grand jury, which declined to indict Capers that December. His mother fought for public access to the body-camera recording.

A Gulfport officer fatally shot 15-year-old Jaheim McMillan outside a Family Dollar in October 2022. Fitch’s office presented that case to a grand jury, which declined to indict in February 2023.

These were grand-jury decisions, distinct from an attorney general announcing a clearance. They should not be collapsed into a single category of cases Fitch personally dismissed.

Her office has also prosecuted officers. The six former officers known as the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty to state and federal charges after torturing two Black men. That record rules out any blanket claim that Fitch never pursues police misconduct.

The relevant question is how consistently and transparently her office evaluates the cases before it.

An earlier vehicle-threat allegation adds context

Records identify Sgt. Hunter Foster as the subject of the investigation into Kohen’s shooting. Mississippi Today’s Oct. 19 report identifies him as the officer who fired, although Fitch’s clearance does not name the officer.

Foster previously faced an allegation involving another parking-lot encounter and a disputed vehicle threat.

Mississippi Today’s examination of that case described a federal lawsuit over a 2019 confrontation in Southaven. Plaintiffs accused Foster of falsely reporting that a driver nearly ran over another officer. The outlet reported that surveillance footage did not show the claimed threat.

Foster denied the allegations through his attorney. The lawsuit ended in a confidential settlement in 2022, without a judicial finding establishing that he falsified his account.

That history cannot establish what happened outside Walmart. It does reinforce the importance of testing statements against recordings and physical evidence.

Separate reporting also documented an internal complaint alleging Foster made a racially offensive remark to a Black colleague two days before Kohen’s death. The colleague later resigned, citing the department’s handling of his complaint among his reasons.

In September, Senatobia fired Police Chief Harold Vanderford after reporting exposed racist text messages. These matters help explain concerns about the department’s culture. They do not independently establish a racial motive for Kohen’s shooting.

The entire encounter matters

A serious review must examine how the encounter developed, including facts that support the officer’s account and facts that challenge it.

The Supreme Court addressed that principle in its unanimous 2025 decision in Barnes v. Felix. Courts evaluating Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims must consider relevant circumstances leading up to a shooting. They cannot restrict the inquiry to the final instant when an officer perceived a threat.

The ruling did not decide Kohen’s case or establish whether a Mississippi criminal charge was warranted. It does underscore why context matters: earlier events can change how later actions should reasonably be understood.

For the public, that means access to a meaningful sequence of events, rather than a few selected seconds. It also means an explanation of what officers knew about the child and how investigators evaluated the decision to shoot.

Nolan Wells raises a different accountability question

The demand for answers also follows the death of Nolan Wells, whose case has drawn sustained attention in Mississippi.

As USA Herald previously reported, a Jackson County grand jury declined to indict anyone in Wells’ death. Both pathologists left the cause and manner of death undetermined. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath handled that process; Fitch did not personally dismiss the case.

Fitch did publicly defend the professionalism of the investigators and local prosecutor while their work continued. That places her within the broader debate over confidence in Mississippi’s institutions, while leaving the decisions in the two cases legally distinct.

The connection is the public’s demand for an explanation it can evaluate. That demand should be answered with records and reasoning, not treated as hostility toward the justice system.

Mississippi owes more than an announcement

The next steps should be concrete. Release the available recordings with necessary privacy protections, identify any withheld material and explain the reasons. Publish a factual account showing how the physical evidence, witness statements and footage support the clearance.

Address the mother’s statement about never being interviewed. Explain how investigators evaluated the child’s presence and the alleged vehicle threat. Provide a case-level accounting of the police-shooting reviews behind the office’s reported numbers.

Those requests do not presume an officer’s guilt. They recognize the extraordinary power exercised when police fire a weapon and the responsibility that follows when a child dies.

Kohen will never grow older. His family must live with the consequences of decisions made in that parking lot. Mississippi’s responsibility to explain those decisions cannot end with the word “justified.”