A one-year-old boy named Kohen Wiley is dead, shot when a police officer fired into a moving car in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi. Now a second autopsy commissioned by the child's family is challenging the official version of what happened, and the authorities who could settle the matter are staying quiet.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump presented the preliminary findings at Senatobia Church of Christ, standing at the pulpit surrounded by more than a dozen people including the baby's grandparents. Some held signs reading "Justice for Baby Kohen." The central claim: the bullet that killed the child entered his torso from the right side and exited the left, suggesting the shot came from the side of the car, not the front.
That distinction matters. If the shot came from the side, it undercuts the account state investigators initially offered, that the driver "drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one," forcing an officer to open fire. The family says the car was driving away. The officers say it was coming toward them. A dead baby lies between those two stories, and the public has seen none of the video that could resolve the dispute.
Officers from the Senatobia Police Department and Tate County Sheriff's Department were called to a Walmart parking lot over a report of shoplifted diapers. Kohen Wiley's mother, who has not been publicly named, was in the passenger seat. An unnamed friend was driving. The baby was in the car.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation's initial statement said officers tried to stop the vehicle, the driver accelerated toward them, and one officer discharged his weapon. The car fled the scene. Kohen Wiley was killed. His mother, described as a Black woman, was critically wounded.
The family disputes the shoplifting allegation entirely. Kohen's mother has said her friend paid for the diapers. The New York Post reported that the baby's great-grandmother, Carolyn Stokes, said the family was given almost no information in the immediate aftermath.
"We don't really know anything, why it happened or whatever. All we know is that car was shot up and a one-year-old baby was killed."
Carlos Haynes, Kohen's grandfather, put it more bluntly: "Somebody needs to be held accountable for it."
The family-retained pathologist, whose name has not been disclosed, conducted an independent examination of Kohen Wiley's body. Crump told the gathering that the results showed the baby was shot from the side of the vehicle, not the front. AP News reported additional physical evidence: the passenger-side window was shattered, and a bullet hole was found in the passenger-side windshield, details that align with the family's account that the shot came from the side, not head-on.
If the car were barreling straight at an officer, the bullet trajectory and point of entry into the vehicle should reflect that. The family's autopsy suggests they don't.
Crump framed the contradiction sharply at the press event:
"They want us to believe that it was a life or death situation. They told us that, but they have not showed us that."
He also pointed to what officers knew before firing. As ABC News reported, Crump stated that officers witnessed two adults and the child getting into the vehicle before the shooting began: "yet he saw fit to shoot into a moving vehicle when he knew a baby was there."
That is a damning claim, if it holds up. But it is, for now, a claim made by one side's attorney. The officers have not spoken publicly. And the investigation remains open.
Not everyone is ready to draw firm conclusions from the autopsy alone. Ian Adams, a policing expert at the University of South Carolina, told the AP that more information is needed: "We need to know a lot more before drawing firm conclusions based on bullet wounds alone."
That is a fair point. Bullet trajectories can be complicated by vehicle movement, angle of approach, and the position of occupants. A single independent autopsy, presented by the family's own lawyer, without the full report being made public, is not the final word.
But it is a word. And right now, it is almost the only one the public has heard.
This is where the story shifts from a disputed shooting to a transparency failure, and that failure belongs squarely to the authorities.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation declined to comment, with a spokesperson stating in an email that "the case remains an open and ongoing investigation." That is a standard response. It is also, at this point, an insufficient one.
The family has demanded the release of police body camera footage, dashcam video, and Walmart surveillance recordings. None have been made public. The names of the officers involved have not been released. Whether any officer has been placed on administrative leave or disciplined in any way is unknown. Whether the driver or the mother has been charged with shoplifting, the alleged offense that started all of this, is also unclear.
Crump addressed the silence directly:
"We are here because the lack of transparency, and we're going to try to continue to demand transparency."
He is right to demand it. Whatever the full facts turn out to be, the public interest in this case is overwhelming. A baby is dead. His mother was critically wounded. The triggering offense, if it even occurred, was the alleged theft of diapers. The authorities owe the public a full accounting, and the longer they wait, the more the vacuum fills with suspicion.
The list of unanswered questions is long, and that itself is a problem weeks after the shooting. The officer who fired has not been named. The law enforcement agencies involved have not explained why body camera or dashcam footage has not been released. Walmart has not confirmed whether surveillance video exists or has been turned over to investigators. The mother's current medical condition is unclear. The full second autopsy report has not been made public, only Crump's characterization of its findings.
Community protests have taken place in Senatobia, a small Mississippi town where residents have cited what they describe as a string of troubling encounters with police in recent years. The case has drawn comparisons to other high-profile police shootings of Black individuals, including the death of George Floyd.
Those comparisons may or may not prove apt. Every case turns on its own facts. But the pattern of official silence, withheld video, and unnamed officers is a pattern the public has seen before, and it never ages well.
Conservatives who value law and order should be the first to demand accountability here, not the last. Supporting police does not mean supporting every use of force, under every circumstance, without scrutiny. An officer fired a weapon into a car he knew contained a one-year-old child. The child died. The justification offered, that the vehicle was driving toward officers, is now directly contradicted by an independent autopsy and physical evidence from the vehicle itself.
If the officers' account is accurate, the video will show it. Release the video. If the shooting was justified, the evidence will bear that out. Release the evidence. If the investigation requires more time, explain why, specifically, publicly, and on the record.
The MBI's boilerplate "open and ongoing investigation" line does not cut it when a baby is in the ground and the only detailed account the public has heard comes from the family's attorney.
Taxpayers fund these agencies. Taxpayers employ these officers. Taxpayers deserve to know what happened in that parking lot, all of it, from every available camera angle. The longer Senatobia and the state of Mississippi stonewall, the harder it becomes to believe they have nothing to hide.
A child was killed over what may have been a pack of diapers. If that doesn't warrant full public transparency, nothing does.
