Something is deeply broken in how we police this country when a 1-year-old can be shot dead in a parking lot and we’re still piecing together what happened weeks later.
Kohen Wiley was asleep in a car seat outside a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi, this past weekend when officers opened fire. He didn’t make it. Now his mother is alive, traumatized, and speaking out. And the rest of the country is watching another Black family grieve a child taken far too soon.
The official version of events, as laid out by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, goes like this: police responded to a report of alleged shoplifting at the Walmart. When they arrived, they found two people and a child leaving the store and getting into a vehicle. Officers tried to stop the car. The vehicle “drove toward them and nearly hit an officer.” That’s when one officer fired, killing Kohen and critically injuring an adult inside the car.
That’s the police account. But here’s the thing, and it matters: the story doesn’t end there.
The Mother’s Version
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, was a passenger in the vehicle. She shared her side of things in a video through her attorney, and it paints a dramatically different picture.
“They was all on the right side, and she was driving towards the left,” Wiley said, disputing the claim that the driver was heading toward the officers. She also insists camera footage at self-checkout would show there was no shoplifting in the first place.
There are few things more gut-wrenching than hearing a mother describe trying to tell officers there was a baby in the car before they started shooting. “By the time I sat my baby back down, it was like three to four shots,” Wiley said. “One of the shots hit him in his ribcage, and the other shots hit [the driver] in her arm and her thigh.”
She wasn’t charged with any crime. Neither was anyone else in that car, as far as we know.
The Demands for Transparency
Protesters gathered near the Walmart on Tuesday, shouting for justice and answers. Officers responded with tear gas. You have to sit with that image for a moment. A community shows up to mourn and demand accountability, and they’re met with chemical agents.
The family’s attorney, Van Turner, who’s working with prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, said it best: they want a transparent investigation with no chance of a cover-up. That’s not a radical demand. That’s the bare minimum when a child is dead.
Commissioner Sean Tindell from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said video evidence won’t be released until the state investigation is complete. The family and protesters are right to be frustrated by that. Waiting weeks or months for footage we already paid for to see the light of day is par for the course in this country, and it’s draining.
The Grandmother’s Question
Kohen’s grandmother, Licole Wiley, asked something simple that deserves a real answer. “Policeman shot, opened fire in a public setting, over allegedly some Pampers. Whatever the incident may come to, it still didn’t need for you to shoot two adults and a baby that was not even a threat to you.”
She’s right. We can litigate the details of whether someone looked like they were about to hit an officer, or whether shoplifting actually occurred, but none of that explains why a 1-year-old is dead.
This is the part that keeps me up at night. The “what ifs” that never should have to exist. What if the officers waited another second? What if they didn’t shoot at all? What if they’d seen a baby and de-escalated instead?
For more on how policing practices are being examined across the country, visit our news section.
We may never get satisfying answers. But we can keep asking the questions, keep the pressure on, and keep saying names like Kohen Wiley until something changes.
