A one-year-old is dead, an officer is on leave with his name still hidden, and Senatobia is in the streets demanding answers the state has not given. The name Kohen Wiley belongs to a baby who should be turning the corner into toddlerhood right now, learning words and testing his legs, not lying at the center of a police shooting that has Senatobia, Mississippi in open revolt.
A 1-year-old child is dead after police officers in Mississippi opened fire on a vehicle in a crowded Walmart parking lot in Senatobia. His mother, who has not been charged with any crime, says she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car. They fired… pic.twitter.com/VWcDtiz6T4
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) June 16, 2026
Kohen Kartier Wiley was just one when an officer opened fire on the vehicle he was riding in outside a Walmart on Sunday, June 14. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital. An adult in the car was critically injured. In the days since, a small Mississippi town about forty miles south of Memphis has become the newest flashpoint in a national conversation about how quickly law enforcement reaches for a gun.
According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers from the Senatobia Police Department responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart on U.S. 51 early Sunday afternoon. The agency says officers encountered two women and a child leaving the store and getting into a vehicle, attempted to stop the car, and that the driver drove in the direction of officers and nearly struck one of them before an officer fired into the vehicle. The car then fled the scene and arrived at a hospital, where the baby was pronounced dead. No officers were seriously injured, the bureau said.
That is the official version, and it is not the version Kohen Wiley’s family is telling. Relatives have flatly denied that any shoplifting took place. Witnesses who spoke to the Mississippi Free Press described seeing two women walk out of the store, one carrying a single box of diapers and the other carrying the baby. One witness said officers were already waiting in the parking lot. Another said they watched officers chase the vehicle on foot before the gunfire started. Photos taken after the shooting show multiple bullet holes in the windshield, including on the passenger side where the family says the mother was sitting with her child.
The detail that has set the community on fire is what the mother says she was doing in those final seconds. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is now representing the family alongside attorney Van Turner, said Kohen’s mother was trying to tell officers there was a baby in the car. They fired anyway, Crump said, calling it the death of an innocent child whose life was stolen. The mother has not been charged with any crime.
For the people who loved Kohen Wiley, the math does not add up. His grandmother, Licole Wiley, whose sister was the woman critically wounded in the car, told Action News 5 that an officer opened fire in a public parking lot over what she described as some Pampers. Whatever the situation was, she said, it did not call for shooting two adults and a baby who posed no threat. That sentiment, that a child died over diapers, has become the rallying cry echoing through Senatobia.
The protests started almost immediately and have not stopped. Demonstrators gathered outside Senatobia City Hall, outside the Tate County Courthouse, and outside the same Walmart where the shooting happened, calling for the officer to be arrested and fired rather than quietly reassigned. On Tuesday night, June 16, the response to those protesters escalated when law enforcement deployed tear gas to disperse crowds outside the store. The image of a town being gassed while grieving a baby has only deepened the anger.
It was that same Tuesday night that city officials finally moved. During a meeting of the mayor and board of aldermen, the City of Senatobia placed the officer who shot Kohen Wiley on administrative leave. The officer has not been publicly named. Administrative leave is standard practice after a deadly police shooting, which is precisely why it has not satisfied a community demanding an arrest, a name, and the release of the footage that would show what actually happened.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has taken over the case, with Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell promising a transparent and independent inquiry. Tindell said five agents are gathering evidence and witness statements, reviewing body camera and dash camera video along with Walmart’s own surveillance footage, and will ultimately hand their findings to the state attorney general’s office. He called it a very tragic situation and asked the public to be patient. He also said the body camera footage will not be released until the investigation is complete, a decision that has done little to calm a town that wants to see for itself.
The withholding of that video is the crux of the standoff. Families and advocates who have lived through cases like Kohen Wiley’s know that the gap between the official account and the footage is often where the truth lives. Marquell Bridges, founder of the advocacy group Building Bridges, has been blunt, insisting on social media that the officer fired before the car was even fully started and demanding the release of the body camera video, the dash camera video, the Walmart surveillance, and the 911 call that started it all. He described the open car door that witnesses saw as a young Black mother begging police to understand that her baby was inside.
Walmart, for its part, said it was saddened by what took place at its Senatobia store and that it is working with law enforcement during the investigation. That cooperation includes the surveillance video investigators say they are reviewing, footage that could either support or undercut the official narrative.
What happens next will test whether Mississippi’s promise of transparency is real or rhetorical. The family has powerful representation, the protests show no sign of fading, and the questions stacking up around the death of Kohen Wiley are the kind that body camera footage answers in a matter of minutes. A baby is gone, an officer is on leave with his name still hidden, and an entire town is waiting to see whether the people who are supposed to protect the public will be held to the same standard as everyone else. Until that footage is public and a decision comes from the attorney general’s office, Senatobia has made clear it does not intend to be quiet.
