The Mississippi Officer Who Shot 1-Year-Old Kohen Wiley in a Walmart Parking Lot Resigned a Day After Body-Camera Video of the Shooting Was Released
Senatobia, Mississippi, a small city about 40 miles south of Memphis, has lost the police sergeant who fired the shot that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. Sgt. Hunter Foster’s resignation was accepted a day after body-camera footage of the June 14, 2026, shooting in a Walmart parking lot was released online through a leak, and two days after state officials cleared him of criminal wrongdoing.
Kohen’s family and their attorney say the resignation falls far short of accountability, and they are pressing for a federal investigation.
A week of decisions in the Kohen Wiley case
On Monday, Oct. 19, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced that her office had found the officer’s use of force justified and would not pursue criminal charges. Mississippi Today reported that Fitch’s short statement referred to “one officer” without naming him and that no report was published with it. Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, told the newsroom she learned of the decision on Facebook.
Late the next day, selected surveillance and body-camera footage from the shooting leaked and was first published by Darkhorse Press. The Mississippi Free Press reported that the leaked compilation included two officers’ body cameras and Walmart surveillance video but not the camera worn by Foster. A Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson, Alex Gibert, said on Oct. 21 that Foster’s footage existed and would be released within days after the family had a chance to view it. The department released it on Thursday, Oct. 22.
Foster’s resignation came between the leak and the official release. According to Mississippi Today, city leadership accepted his resignation late Wednesday, Oct. 21. On Friday, Oct. 23, Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves confirmed the resignation to The Associated Press. Gibert told the AP that Foster, 33, was still certified as a police officer in Mississippi as of that day.
What happened in the Walmart parking lot
According to the AP’s account, officers were at the Senatobia Walmart on June 14 for an unrelated call when an employee told them two women were running from the store. Police were responding to a possible shoplifting. Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has denied that she and her friend stole diapers, and court records show neither woman has been charged.
The footage shows Wiley running across the lot with Kohen and getting into a car with her friend as five officers approach with guns drawn, the AP reported. The car backs up and hits a parked vehicle. It then moves forward as Foster steps in front of it, and the wheels turn away from him. Foster fires, and a round shatters the front passenger window where Kohen was sitting on his mother’s lap. Kohen would have turned 2 in early November.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had said the car drove toward officers, “almost striking” one, Mississippi Today reported in September, when the bureau handed its findings to the attorney general. Foster had been placed on paid leave after MBI documents released in error identified him as the subject of the investigation. Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said at the time that the report and video would be made public only if prosecutors declined to bring charges or a grand jury declined to indict.
Experts who reviewed the video
Mississippi Today asked several use-of-force experts to review the footage. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said the shooting “could have been avoided” and that officers should stand to the side of a car, not in front of it. Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said that shooting at a driver turns a car into “an unguided missile.”
Not every reviewer faulted the officers. David Mastagni, an attorney who represents police officers, cautioned that video gives a hindsight view that officers do not have in the moment. Michael Gennaco, a former federal civil rights prosecutor, said the bar for a criminal case in Mississippi is high but that the shooting could still have been wrong or tactically deficient.
Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said Foster had no choice but to fire because the car was moving toward him. He declined to comment on the resignation, according to the AP.
What Kohen’s family wants next
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the family, said the footage shows the fatal shot came from the side of the car and that Foster was not in imminent danger, a conclusion he said an independent autopsy commissioned by the family also reached. “Officer Foster’s resignation is hardly a step toward accountability,” Crump said in a statement reported by the AP, adding that it “is certainly not justice.”
The family’s legal team has asked for a federal investigation and wants Foster decertified so that no other agency can hire him. Crump had pressed for months for the footage to be released; after the Senatobia Board of Aldermen fired Police Chief Harold Vanderford in September over alleged racist text messages, Crump renewed his call for the state to finish its investigation into Foster.
Foster’s record has also drawn scrutiny. The AP reported that a 2021 federal lawsuit accused him and 12 other Southaven officers of civil rights violations during a 2019 arrest of two Black men at a Waffle House, including an allegation that Foster filed a false report claiming the men tried to run over an officer. The officers denied wrongdoing, and Southaven settled the case in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.
With the attorney general’s decision, no criminal case is pending against Foster, while the family continues to press for a federal review and for his decertification.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: “Mississippi State Capitol Building (26815684617)” by formulanone, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
