Hunter Foster, the Mississippi police officer who shot into a vehicle and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, has resigned from the Senatobia Police Department. Earlier this week, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced that the shooting was “justified.”
The Senatobia Board of Aldermen accepted Foster’s resignation on October 21, and the resignation was effective immediately. Foster was placed on leave on June 16, days after the June 14 shooting. Yesterday, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety released body camera and surveillance footage of the shooting, at a Walmart in Senatobia, in which the toddler died in his mother’s arms after being shot.
In the footage, Foster is seen exiting a Walmart with other officers after an employee said the shoplifters were fleeing. Authorities alleged that Kohen’s mother and a friend stole diapers from Walmart; neither woman has been charged.
Seconds after leaving the store, Foster pointed his gun at a vehicle in which Kohen, his mother and another woman were traveling. Three shots were fired, all from Foster’s gun, although several officers drew their weapons. Foster struck and injured the driver of the vehicle and killed Kohen.
At a news conference Thursday, prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Kohen’s family, called for a federal investigation into the shooting. It also calls for Foster to be decertified, which would prevent him from serving as a police officer elsewhere.
“The bullet that killed Kohen Wiley was not justified,” 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.”
Kohen would have been two years old on November 1st.
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