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Police officer resigns months after he fatally shot 1-year-old in Mississippi
The police officer who fatally shot a 1-year-old boy in Mississippi as his mother was holding him resigned this week, the mayor of the city where it happened confirmed on Friday.
The officer — identified in public records as Hunter Foster by local media outlet Action News 5 — offered his resignation to the Senatobia Board of Aldermen on Wednesday, Mayor Greg Graves said. Foster’s departure came two days after the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office announced that investigators had determined his use of force in the June shooting of the infant, Kohen Wiley, was “justified,” and a day before the city’s public safety department released officers’ body camera footage of the shooting.
The members of the Senatobia Board of Aldermen did not immediately respond to requests for comment from MS NOW on Friday.
The body camera footage, obtained by MS NOW, sheds more light on what happened on the afternoon of June 14, when officers were summoned to the Walmart to review security footage of a man who was allegedly sexually harassing customers, according to an investigation report that also released Thursday. While officers were reviewing the footage, a store employee interrupted them to report that two people — later identified as Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and a friend — were fleeing, according to the report and the footage.
The video from Foster’s body camera shows him running outside with other officers and approaching the car as the driver — Wiley’s friend — backs up and collides with another vehicle. The driver then moves forward, and Foster runs toward the front of the car and puts out his hand, which hits the hood. He appears to fire his gun multiple times, causing some of the glass in the passenger-side window to shatter. The driver then collided with another car, briefly slowed, and then sped off.
A statement released by the state Department of Public Safety the day of the shooting said the women had been accused of shoplifting, and the officer shot his gun after police tried to stop the car “but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.”
But the family’s legal team has disputed the conclusion that the driver was endangering the officers. An independent autopsy conducted by forensic psychologist Roger Mitchell and released by the family’s legal team to MS NOW in July found that the baby was shot through the side of his body, which the lawyers argued was an indicator that the car was not driving toward the officers. Wiley, Kohen’s mother, has said she held the baby up to show officers he was in the car before they shot him.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Kohen’s family, said in a statement that Foster’s resignation is “hardly a step toward accountability, and it is certainly not justice.” He said the legal team will continue seeking Foster’s decertification — which would prevent him from working as a law enforcement officer in the state — as well as a federal investigation.
“Turning in a badge does not erase responsibility for taking a life, and it will not end our fight for justice for Kohen and his family,” Crump added.
At a news conference on Thursday, Crump said the officers were “excessive from the very start,” noting that several of them had surrounded the car with their guns drawn before the shooting took place, despite the fact that Wiley’s friend had only been accused of stealing diapers.
“Shoplifting diapers is a misdemeanor,” he said. “It does not warrant the death penalty.”
Crump has alleged racism was at play in the incident: Foster is white, the redacted case files release Thursday confirm, and Kohen and his mother are Black. Mississippi Today and The New York Times previously reported that Foster allegedly made racist remarks toward two co-workers, one of whom is Black and the other of whom is white and has a child with a Black partner.
It is unclear why Foster resigned. His lawyer, Martin Zummach, declined to comment to MS NOW on Foster’s resignation. In a statement provided to NBC News, Zummach said Foster “resigned for the good of the city and the police department and to permit the process of healing.”
“He is still shocked and sickened that a baby died and emphatically denies knowing a child was in the car or in the front seat and had no idea that those fleeing were suspected of shoplifting,” Zummach said, according to NBC News.
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