Police shot and killed a one-year-old Black boy during a shoplifting call at a Walmart store in in Senatobia, Mississippi, reports NBC News:
Kohen Wiley, 1, was in a vehicle with his mother and a family friend when he was fatally shot, said civil rights attorney Ben Crump. The friend was critically injured, he said.
“Kohen Wiley was a baby. 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,” Crump said in a statement Tuesday.
“They fired anyway, leading to the death of an innocent 1-year-old. We intend to seek justice for baby Kohen and the life that was stolen from him.”
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting, said in a statement that when Senatobia police officers arrived, they “encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle.”
The state agency said police tried to stop the vehicle, “but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.” An officer then discharged their weapon, firing at the vehicle, according to the MBI.
The driver then drove to a nearby hospital, where the child was pronounced dead, the bureau said…
Marquell Bridges, a community advocate who is helping the family, said Tuesday on Facebook that the boy’s mother did not steal from Walmart “and was not a witness to or accomplice to any crime.”
“She was skipping and playing with her child, Kohen, to the car moments earlier, not fleeing a theft,” he said. “What started as an ordinary day, playing with your baby and getting into a car, turned into the worst day of a mother’s life and a tragedy this community will carry for years to come.”
(Sources: NBC News, Marquell Bridges)