Mississippi's attorney general has ruled that a police officer's use of deadly force was "justified" in the shooting death of a 1-year-old boy — and the state is refusing to release the video that could prove it.
The familiar script plays out again: state investigates state, state finds state did nothing wrong, and the public is told to trust the conclusion without seeing the evidence.
AG Lynn Fitch closed the state's investigation Monday into the June incident in Senatobia, where a police officer responding to a shoplifting call fired into a moving vehicle, killing infant Kohen Wiley and badly wounding a woman in the passenger seat.
According to M Live, investigators claim the car was driving toward officers in a Walmart parking lot and the driver refused to stop. The officer's attorney, Martin Zummach, told the Associated Press the driver "tried to kill" his client and other officers. "He had no choice but to fire his weapon," Zummach said.
But the physical evidence tells a different story. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Kohen's family, says a preliminary independent autopsy showed the child was shot from the side of the car — not the front — directly contradicting the claim the vehicle was bearing down on officers.
A photo of the car after the shooting shows the passenger window shattered and a bullet hole in the windshield on the passenger side. Charles "Joe" Key, a firearms expert and former Baltimore police lieutenant who typically testifies in defense of police, said the image suggests the officer fired from the side. "That indicates that the officer who did the shooting was not personally at risk at the time he shot," Key told the AP.
John P. Gross, an expert on police use of force on moving vehicles, was even more direct: "This shooting was almost certainly unjustified." His reasoning is simple common sense — if a car is coming at you, the best practice is to step out of the way, not fire into it.
The two women in the car — Kohen's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and a friend — were accused of stealing diapers and baby clothes. Neither has been charged with any crime, according to online court records. Vellesiya Wiley denies stealing anything.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says it reviewed witness statements, body camera footage, dash camera video, and Walmart surveillance. None of it has been released to the public.
"How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen's family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?" Crump said. "If the footage supports the state's decision, release it."
The officer who fired the fatal shot has not been identified and was placed on administrative leave, which city officials call standard practice.
When government holds a monopoly on force and a monopoly on investigating its own use of force, the people lose every time. The state says trust us. The evidence says otherwise. Release the tape.
