Mississippi releases video showing fatal police shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley

Mississippi released video Thursday showing the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by a police officer whom state authorities have cleared of criminal wrongdoing. Kohen Wiley was killed in June when Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster fired his gun into a moving vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call. Kohen’s family says video of the fatal encounter shows the shooting was not justified. The Mississippi attorney general’s office said this week its monthlong investigation found that Foster’s use of force was appropriate. Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said his client had “no choice” but to shoot at the vehicle because it was going to hit him. Zummach confirmed to NBC News that he represents Foster and that Foster is the officer who fired his weapon. Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Kohen’s family, said Foster was not in danger when he fired the shot that killed the 1-year-old. Crump said the video shows Foster fired the shot from the passenger side of the car. Kohen’s close relatives watched the video taken during the June 14 encounter in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The video included imagery from the camera worn by the officer who shot and killed Kohen. Kohen would have celebrated his second birthday in early November, Crump said at a news conference Thursday. “The word ‘justified’ has haunted me,” Kohen’s maternal grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said at the news conference. “There’s no justification for that.” Roberson said that she found out from reading the news that the state had cleared the officer and that she also saw parts of the video that had been leaked online Wednesday. She called the lack of notice from the attorney general’s office and the leak of the video a “slap in the face” to her family. Zummach told NBC News by email that “the investigation and findings contradict the false narrative that has been spread the last 4 months.” He said that “there will still be those that find fault with the police combined with people who make their living issuing [divisive] opinions.” Video shows multiple angles of the fatal encounter The Mississippi Department of Public Safety on Thursday released video showing the shooting from multiple law enforcement officers’ body-worn cameras. Darkhorse Press, a Mississippi crime and community news outlet with a focus on law enforcement, posted some of the video on its website Wednesday. The organization’s founder, Therese Apel, is the department’s former communications director. The videos show two women, one holding a baby, running across the parking lot and entering a vehicle. Five officers approach the parked car with guns drawn. The car reverses away and crashes into a parked vehicle nearby as officers yell for it to stop. The vehicle then accelerates forward as an officer steps toward it, directly in front, with his gun drawn. The wheels turn away from him, and he appears to put his hands on the hood as he jumps out of the way. He fires his gun, shattering the window of the front passenger side. The car continues to drive away before the video cuts out. Wiley’s family attorney says officers’ actions were reckless Crump said the officers’ response — running at the vehicle with guns drawn to apprehend alleged shoplifters — was excessive and reckless. Vellesiya Wiley previously denied that she and her friend stole diapers from the store, and they have not been charged, according to state and county court records. She has said she raised Kohen up to show officers that he was in the car. “Diapers are something a mother needs for a child. Diapers should never cost a baby their life,” Crump said. “This decision sends a message that a Black baby boy, his life, is not as valuable as the white diapers that he is wrapped in.” Zummach, Foster’s attorney, has said the video vindicates his client because he was in danger from the moving vehicle and had “no choice” but to fire his gun. “She came right at Hunter Foster and the other officer, and he had to shoot his weapon,” Zummach told The Associated Press. Wiley has disputed that her friend, who was driving, headed toward the officers. Crump said the video shows the fatal shot came from the side of the car, disputing that Foster was in imminent danger. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family concluded the same. An image of the vehicle shows its shattered right front passenger window. The family’s legal team called for the federal government to investigate the shooting. Zummach said it was “strictly muscle memory” that prompted Foster to fire additional shots. “The one that went through the side glass that everybody’s going crazy about? That’s because she was moving so fast,” Zummach said. “Your brain can’t talk to your finger that fast to stop,” he added. Experts provide conflicting analysis Two use-of-force experts reviewed the video at the request of the AP but provided conflicting assessments, illustrating the complexity of the encounter. Charles “Joe” Key, a former Baltimore police lieutenant who frequently serves as an expert witness in police use-of-force cases, said that while it is a tragedy that a child was killed, the shooting was a split-second decision that Foster made as the vehicle drove toward him and another officer. He said the driver appeared to use the vehicle to commit assault with a deadly weapon. Wiley’s friend, who was driving, has not been charged. “The officer that fired the shots narrowly escaped being run over and appeared to touch the car as he was moving,” Key said. “The shooting was objectively reasonable.” But John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force against moving vehicles, said Foster used “really bad tactics.” “He should never have placed himself in a position where he could have been struck,” Gross said, adding that an accusation of shoplifting did not justify “use of deadly force on a fleeing suspect.”