The police officer who shot and killed a 1-year-old boy in Mississippi while fired at a moving vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call, he resigned, Senatobia’s mayor told the Associated Press on Friday.
Sgt. Hunter Foster, 33, had been cleared of criminal acts by the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office earlier this week after its months-long investigation concluded his use of force was justified.
The state released videos of the fatal shooting of Kohen Wiley on Thursday, including footage from Foster’s body-worn camera the meeting of June 14 in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee.
Senatorobia Mayor Greg Graves confirmed Foster’s resignation on Friday.
Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, declined to comment when contacted Friday. Zummach said Foster had “no choice” but to fire his gun at the vehicle because it was moving toward him.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, disputed that her friend, who was driving, drove toward the officers.
Videos show fatal shooting in Walmart parking lot
Ben Crump, an attorney for Kohen’s family, said the footage shows 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 thing. 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.
Van Turner, another attorney representing Kohen’s family, requested that Foster be decertified as a police officer.
“What we need is for him to be decertified so he can’t go to another police department and do the same thing,” Van Turner said during a news conference Thursday.
The Wiley family and legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Foster’s resignation Friday.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Alex Gibert said Friday that Foster remains certified as a police officer.
Kohen would have celebrated his second birthday in early November.
The group of officers were at the Walmart store responding to an unrelated incident, according to a report from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. A Walmart employee then alerted them to the presence of two women fleeing the store.
The videos show Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, holding Kohen in her arms as she and her friend run 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 away.
Vellesiya Wiley denied stealing diapers from the store and she was not charged, according to state and county court records.
Former Senatobia officer prosecuted for alleged civil rights violations
Foster has worked for two other Mississippi agencies since 2019 after earning his law enforcement officer certificate there.
He worked for the Police Department in Southaven, a city in DeSoto County that is part of the greater Memphis area, for two years, then was employed by the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office until October 2024. About five months later, he was hired by the Police Department in Senatobia, a city of about 8,000, according to state documents obtained by the AP.
A lawsuit filed in federal court in Mississippi in 2021 accused Foster and a group of 12 other Southaven police officers of civil rights violations during the 2019 arrest of two Black men outside a Waffle House. The two men said they were looking for a lost set of keys when they were violently arrested and beaten by several police officers.
They alleged Foster submitted a report falsely stating they attempted to run over another officer with their vehicle. Foster and the other officers have denied any wrongdoing. The Southaven Police Department agreed to settle the case in 2022 for an undisclosed amount, according to court records.
Last month, Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired by the city’s Board of Aldermen, after The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News reported that he used racial slurs in private text messages.
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