Authorities in Mississippi released video Thursday showing the fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by a police officer who opened fire as he dodged a car driven by a family friend. A state investigation found no criminal act on the part of the police officerbut the family’s lawyer says it was an excessive use of force.
Kohen Wiley was killed in June when Senate Police Sgt. Hunter Foster fired his gun at a moving vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call. Kohen’s family says footage of the deadly encounter shows the shooting was not justified.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office said this week that its month-long investigation found that Foster’s use of force was appropriate. Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, said his client had “no choice” but to shoot at the vehicle because it was going to hit him.
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 from the passenger side of the car.
Kohen’s close relatives watched the images filmed during the meeting of June 14 in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The video included footage from the officer’s body-worn camera who shot and killed Kohen.
Kohen would have celebrated his second birthday in early November, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Kohen’s family, said at a news conference Thursday.
“The word ‘justified’ haunted me,” Kohen’s maternal grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said at the news conference. “There is no justification for this.”
Roberson said she found out while reading the news that the state had cleared the officer, and she also saw portions of the video that were leaked online Wednesday. She called the lack of notice from the attorney general’s office and the leaking of the footage a “slap in the face” to her family.
Video shows multiple angles of fatal encounter
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety released images Thursday showing the filming body-worn cameras for several law enforcement officers, including Foster. Darkhorse Press, a law enforcement-focused community and crime news outlet in Mississippi, posted some of that footage on its website a day earlier. The organization’s founder, Thérèse Apel, is formerly director of communications for the department.
The videos show Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, holding Kohen as she and her friend walk across the parking lot and get into their vehicle. Five police officers approach the parked car, guns drawn. The car reverses and crashes into a parked vehicle nearby as officers yell at it to stop.
The vehicle then accelerates forward as Foster walks towards it, directly ahead, 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 front passenger side window, where Kohen was sitting on his mother’s lap. The car continues to drive before the video stops.
Kohen Wiley’s family lawyer says officers’ actions were reckless
Crump said the officers’ response — running toward the vehicle with weapons drawn to apprehend the suspected shoplifters — was excessive and reckless.
Vellesiya Wiley had previously denied stealing diapers from the store and she had not been charged, according to state and county court records.
“Diapers are something a mother needs for her child. Diapers should never cost a baby’s life,” Crump said. “This decision sends the message that a little black boy, his life, is not as valuable as the white diapers he is wrapped in.”
Zummach, who represents Foster, said the footage vindicated his client because it showed he was in danger from the moving vehicle.
“She walked straight toward Hunter Foster and the other officer and he must have fired his gun,” Zummach said.
Vellesiya Wiley disputed the fact that her friend, who was driving, drove towards the police.
Crump said the footage showed the a fatal shot came from the side of the cardisputing that Foster was in imminent danger. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family concluded the same. An image of the vehicle shows its right front passenger window shattered. The family’s legal team has asked the federal government to investigate the shooting.
Zummach said it was “strictly muscle memory” that prompted Foster to fire extra shots.
“The one that went through the side window that everyone is raving about? That’s because it was moving so fast,” Zummach said.
“Your brain can’t talk to your finger that fast to stop,” he added.
Experts provide conflicting analyzes
John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force against moving vehicles, had a similar explanation for the third shooting after viewing the footage, saying it took a second or two for someone to realize they should stop shooting. But, he said, Foster shouldn’t have pulled out his gun and positioned himself outside the car in the first place.
“He should never have put himself in a position where he could have been struck,” Gross said, adding that a shoplifting charge does not justify “the use of deadly force on a fleeing suspect.”
Gross said that when the car accelerated, he moved out of the way: “So he can’t claim that he was in danger of being hit by the car when he fired. It was already passing him.”
But Charles “Joe” Key, a former Baltimore police lieutenant who frequently serves as an expert witness in police use-of-force cases, said the driver of the car appeared to be using the vehicle to commit an assault with a deadly weapon. Vellesiya Wiley’s friend, who was driving the vehicle, was not charged.
“The officer who fired the shots narrowly escaped being run over and appeared to hit the car as he was moving,” Key said. “The shooting was objectively reasonable.”
___
Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden contributed from Seattle.
Gn usa
