SENATOBIA, Miss. (WMC) – A witness who saw the shooting at the Senatobia Walmart that killed a 1-year-old Sunday shared what she saw.
“I just don’t want the narrative to be that she tried to hit them. Every time that car moved, they moved,” said the woman who did not want to be identified.
According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, Senatobia Police and Tate County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to a shoplifting call where they saw two adults and the child fleeing from the store to a vehicle.
MBI says the driver then drove in the direction of officers nearly hitting one.
1-year-old Kohen Wiley was shot in the ribcage and died.
“Pop pop,” said the woman. “I don’t want to say it was anger but I wanna say it was disbelief. How dare she get out of that spot and keep going.”
Vellesiya Wiley, Kohen’s mother, spoke out for the first time publicly since the shooting.
Wiley is represented by civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner who released a video on Wednesday.
Wiley said she and a friend were leaving Walmart when officers stopped her friend. Wiley said she continued walking “because it had nothing to do with me.”
Wiley said her friend then got into the car, and they started to drive away. She said officers started running towards them.
“I raised my baby up cause they was drawing their guns. She had no tint. I raised my baby up trying to show them that he was in the car. So, she was backing up and she hit a car as I was opening the door so the door flew back in. By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots,” said Wiley.
Wiley said she hasn’t been charged with anything.
“She’s begging for his life and the first bullet kills him,” said Turner, one of the attorneys representing Wiley.
Turner said the family is demanding transparency and accountability. Plus, all surveillance, dash and body camera video be made public.
“If you look at the trajectory of the bullet shots, everything is to the passenger side. That indicates that they were trying to go away from the officer and not run the officer over,” said Turner.
Turner said the family also wants the officer identified and treated like anyone else would be for fatally shooting a baby.
Turner said training and policies in Senatobia, Tate County, and Mississippi should be under question following this incident.
Walmart is back open again following a protest Tuesday night that led to tear gas being deployed by law enforcement. There was a large police presence there throughout the day.
The officer who fired the fatal shots has not been officially identified. Senatobia leaders said the officer has been placed on administrative leave, which is a standard practice after deadly police shootings.
The head of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety is urging residents to be patient as the agency investigates the shooting death of baby Kohen.
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