Police shooting in Senatobia leaves 1-year-old dead, stokes outrage

A 1-year-old boy died after a police encounter in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Mississippi, and the question now driving the town’s anger is how a shoplifting call turned into a deadly shooting with a child inside the vehicle. Kohen Wiley was killed Sunday, June 14, in the lot on U.S. 51, in a city of about 8,000 people roughly 40 miles south of Memphis. Another adult in the car was critically injured.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said officers were responding to a shoplifting call when they saw two adults and a child leaving the store and getting into a vehicle. Investigators said the driver then drove toward officers and nearly struck one, prompting an officer to fire. The officer has been placed on administrative leave while the state investigation continues. Family members, represented publicly by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, have disputed the shoplifting account and said the adults were leaving with diapers. They have said they want accountability and have described the shooting as preventable.

The death has sharpened long-running distrust between Black residents and police in Senatobia, where residents and activists say recent encounters have already left scars. Breshari Faulkner pointed to a 2025 arrest in the same Walmart parking lot, over a handicapped parking-space dispute, as evidence of a pattern of escalation. Body-camera footage from that arrest was later released, adding to community concerns about how officers handle routine calls in public spaces that Black residents say feel increasingly dangerous.

Protests followed Kohen Wiley’s death, with demonstrators gathering outside the Walmart and calling for transparency. Reports said tear gas was used to disperse crowds, further inflaming the sense that officials were responding with force instead of answers. The shooting has become a test of whether Senatobia police and county authorities will explain the sequence of events in a way that the family and community can trust.

On Friday, June 19, Mayor Greg Graves addressed the shooting in a video statement and called the death heartbreaking. Bernice King also condemned the killing, saying that treating store items as more valuable than a child reflects moral collapse. For Wiley’s family, justice now means a full accounting of why officers were at the scene, how the confrontation unfolded, and how a 1-year-old ended up in the line of fire.