An independent autopsy has confirmed what the people of Senatobia, Mississippi already knew in their bones: one-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley was killed by a shotgun blast to the torso, and his death has been ruled a homicide. The bullet entered the right side of his chest through the passenger-side window and tore through his left side — destroying vital organs including his heart, lungs, and aorta. He died on his mother's lap in the backseat of a car in a Walmart parking lot. His crime? Existing while Black in a vehicle someone accused of shoplifting a box of diapers.

And the man who pulled the trigger? He's sitting at home on paid administrative leave. His name has still not been officially released, though we reported weeks ago that sources identified Sergeant Hunter Foster as the officer responsible. He has not been arrested. He has not been charged. Two weeks after blowing a hole through a one-year-old child, he is a free man — shielded by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Senatobia Police Department, and the same carceral apparatus that will warehouse a Black teenager for a bag of weed before the sun goes down.

This is what the system looks like when it works exactly as designed.

Attorney Ben Crump, presents the findings of an independent autopsy of the baby, Kohen Wiley.

What Happened on June 14

Kohen Wiley was one year old. He liked Bluey. He had a toothless grin and a life ahead of him that lasted exactly 365 days before the state took it.

On Sunday, June 14, 2026, Senatobia police responded to a call about alleged shoplifting at the Walmart on U.S. 51. The accusation: someone tried to steal a box of diapers. Let that settle. A one-year-old is dead because American policing treats a box of diapers as a lethal threat requiring armed response.

Kohen's mother, 19-year-old Vellesiya Wiley, says the diapers were paid for at self-checkout. No shoplifting charges have ever been filed — not against her, not against the driver, not against anyone. The "crime" that brought armed officers to this scene doesn't even exist in the record. But in America, the accusation is enough. The badge is enough. The gun is enough.

As we wrote in our analysis of the shooting's first days, two officers responded to the same alleged crime — shoplifting diapers. One bought them. The other executed a baby. That choice — between de-escalation and lethal force — is the choice American policing makes every single day, and it is never an accident which side Black children end up on.

According to Vellesiya's account, she and Kohen were walking to the car when officers stopped the driver — a friend. Vellesiya and Kohen weren't involved. They got in the car. The friend got in the car. They began backing out. Officers approached with weapons drawn.

"I raised my baby up, trying to show them that he was in the car," Vellesiya said. She held her son up to let the officers see — a baby, a one-year-old child, a human being in the vehicle they were about to open fire on.

They fired anyway.

Three to four shots. One tore through Kohen's ribcage. Others hit the driver in the arm and thigh. The family sped to a local hospital where Kohen was pronounced dead.

The Independent Autopsy: A Homicide by Shotgun

On July 1, civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner released findings from an independent autopsy conducted by Dr. Roger Mitchell, a board-certified forensic pathologist. The conclusions were devastating and unambiguous:

• Cause of death: Shotgun wound to the torso
• Manner of death: Homicide
• Entry wound: Right side of the chest — through the passenger window
• Exit wound: Left side of the chest
• Organs destroyed: Heart, lungs, aorta, esophagus

The trajectory of the bullet tells a story that demolishes the police narrative entirely. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety claimed officers fired because the vehicle was "driving in the direction of" them and "almost striking one" officer. But Dr. Mitchell's findings confirm the bullet entered from the side — the passenger side — meaning the officer was positioned to the side of the vehicle, not in front of it. The officer was not in the path of the car. The officer was not in harm's way.

As Crump put it: "You can't get that shot from the front and so, why would you shoot into a vehicle from the side where you are clearly not in harm's way?"

The car's condition corroborates the autopsy. Photos show a shattered passenger-side window and a bullet hole in the front windshield on the passenger side. The officers were not standing in front of an oncoming vehicle. They were firing into the side of a car — into the side where a mother was holding a one-year-old child.

The police lied. The cover story — "the car was coming at us" — is the same script used to justify execution after execution after execution. It is a lie that American policing has told so many times it has become ritual. It's the same lie that shielded the Rankin County "Goon Squad" — Mississippi deputies who tortured Black men for years under the cover of badge and uniform, operating with the impunity that only a compliant state apparatus can provide. Mississippi law enforcement doesn't investigate itself. It protects itself.

Community members march through downtown Senatobia carrying yellow signs demanding justice for 1-year-old Kohen Wiley on June 26, 2026

The MBI: Running Interference for a Child Killer

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has taken control of the case, and they are doing what state investigative bodies always do when police kill civilians: nothing. Slowly.

MBI told the family the investigation could take six to nine months. Six to nine months to investigate a shooting where they already have body camera footage, dash camera footage, Walmart surveillance video, an autopsy report, and multiple witnesses. Ben Crump correctly noted this should take six to nine weeks, not months.

This isn't an investigation. It's a waiting game. The MBI is banking on public outrage fading, on attention moving to the next tragedy, on the family exhausting its resources and its will. It is the oldest play in the American policing playbook: delay, deny, defund the demand for justice until the headlines stop.

MBI has refused to release any video footage — body cam, dash cam, or Walmart surveillance. Commissioner Sean Tindell has said no footage will be released while the investigation is "ongoing." This is not transparency. This is a blackout. The state is hoarding evidence of a child's murder while the public is told to trust the process.

The family does not trust the process. They sought their own autopsy because they do not trust the MBI to tell the truth. As Van Turner, Crump's co-counsel, said: "They wanted this child to be put in the ground, and you not know how this child died. They have the autopsy report, but they won't release it."

That sentence should be read again. The state had its own autopsy. It knows how this child died. It will not tell you.

This is what Mississippi does. This is what Tate Reeves' Mississippi has always done — sell a narrative of reform while protecting the violent machinery beneath it. The MBI's stonewalling isn't incompetence. It's loyalty.

The Officer: Unnamed, Uncharged, Untouchable

Nearly three weeks after killing a one-year-old, the officer who pulled the trigger has not been officially identified by name. As we reported on June 17, sources identified Sergeant Hunter Foster — a DeSoto County sheriff's deputy — as the officer who fired the fatal shot. Weeks before the shooting, Foster was the subject of a racial slur complaint filed by a fellow officer. The department ignored it.

Foster was hired by the Senatobia Police Department in March 2025 and promoted to Sergeant just six months later, in September 2025. He has been placed on administrative leave, which is paid, which is a vacation, which is what you get when you kill a Black child in America and wear a badge.

No arrest. No charges. No booking photo. No perp walk. Just a paid vacation and the full institutional weight of Mississippi law enforcement ensuring he faces no immediate consequences.

This pattern isn't unique to Senatobia, and it isn't unique to Mississippi. We've seen it in Louisville, where police killed Katelyn Hall — a woman in crisis who deserved medical intervention and got bullets instead. We've seen it in the expansion of AI policing that destroys lives while departments claim oversight they never deliver. The script is always the same: kill, claim fear, stall, protect.

A crowd of mourners dressed in teal and blue gather outside the Hosanna Family Worship Center in Pope, Mississippi for the funeral of one-year-old Kohen Wiley on June 27, 2026

The Community: Gas, Snipers, and Silence

The people of Senatobia have responded with fury — and the police have responded to that fury with more state violence.

On June 16, two days after Kohen's murder, 200 people gathered outside Senatobia City Hall. Police positioned snipers on the rooftops of downtown businesses overlooking the crowd. Protest signs reading "END POLICE TERROR" were hoisted while officers in tactical gear monitored from above.

When protesters gathered at the Walmart parking lot — the actual scene of the shooting — police deployed tear gas on them. Tear gas. On people protesting the murder of a baby. The same department that killed a one-year-old then gassed his mourners.

This is the Cop City logic exported to small-town Mississippi — the militarization of domestic policing that turns every community into occupied territory and every protest into a threat requiring suppression. The war comes home, and it comes for Black bodies first.

Protesters have marched repeatedly through the town of 8,500, weaving around police barricades, demanding video footage, demanding the officer's name, demanding arrest. They've been met with locked doors from local businesses, sheriffs intercepting marches on the highway, and construction crews erecting barricades around the police station.

Family friend Tyesha Cox spoke for the community: "It's horrible for them to do the community like this... If they feel the police did right, then why they haven't released any footage?"

On July 1, at the press conference releasing the autopsy findings, Kohen's paternal grandparents stood holding signs reading "Justice for Baby Kohen" and wept openly. Their grandchild is dead. The state will not tell them who killed him. The state will not show them how. The state will not act.

Arrest the Officer. Now.

There is no ambiguity left. An independent autopsy has classified the killing of Kohen Wiley as a homicide. The forensic evidence contradicts the police narrative about the vehicle's trajectory. The entry wound proves the officer was not in danger. No shoplifting charges exist. The accusation that brought armed police to this scene was about diapers.

The community of Senatobia is calling for the immediate arrest of the officer responsible. The next Board of Aldermen meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 8, and activists are mobilizing.

The demands are simple and just:

1. Arrest the officer immediately. A homicide ruling demands nothing less.
2. Release all video footage — body cam, dash cam, and Walmart surveillance. The public has a right to see what the state is hiding.
3. Drop the administrative leave charade. Paid leave is not accountability. It is insulation. Its a paid vacation, nothing more than performative non-action.
4. The MBI must end its stonewalling. A six-to-nine-month investigation for a case with this much evidence is a cover-up by schedule.

Kohen Kartier Wiley was one year old. He was shot with a shotgun through the passenger window of a car in a Walmart parking lot over an accusation about diapers. The officer who killed him has not been arrested. The state will not release the footage. The investigation is being stretched into obscurity.

This is not a miscarriage of justice. In Mississippi, in America, this is justice — delivered to the people it was always meant to subjugate. We documented how anti-ICE protesters in Texas received terrorism convictions for wearing the wrong clothes near a demonstration, and the sentences they received, while officers who kill Black babies go home to their families. The double standard is not a bug. It's the entire operating system.

The system is not broken it was built this way. That system killed Kohen Wiley. This system must cease to exist. There is no debate. Period.