A Mississippi police officer shot and killed a 1-year-old boy Sunday while responding to a shoplifting call at a Walmart — and the establishment press is already making sure you argue about race instead of demanding accountability for the policies that killed him.
Kohen Wiley is dead because an officer fired into a moving vehicle over an alleged diaper theft. That is a policing failure that threatens every community in America, regardless of who lives there. But CNN, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Herald all led with the same framing: "tension between police and Black residents." The racial angle serves the press. Accountability serves the public.
The facts, per the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation: Senatobia police responded to a shoplifting call at a local Walmart on Sunday, found two women and a child leaving the store, and attempted to stop their vehicle. The MBI statement says "the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene."
The child's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, tells a different story. In a video posted by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, she said the officers were "all on the right side and she was driving towards the left" — directly contradicting the claim the car was driving at police. She also says her friend paid for the diapers, disputing the shoplifting allegation at its root.
Both the child and the driver were struck by gunfire.
What all three outlets buried beneath their racial framing: University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Ian Adams stated plainly that "modern policing knows that shooting into a moving vehicle is a very bad idea and one to be avoided at almost all costs." Vehicles have occupants. Shooting into them turns a property crime — or an unverified shoplifting claim — into a potential death sentence for everyone inside.
The outlets all invoked Ta'Kiya Young, the pregnant Ohio woman shot by police in 2023 during a shoplifting stop. That officer was acquitted and found justified in his use of force by a review board. They invoked George Floyd, killed over a fake $20. The pattern isn't only racial — it's institutional. Police shoot into cars over petty theft accusations, review boards clear them, and nothing changes for anyone.
Bernice King got it right: "We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child. That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse."
Kohen Wiley is dead at one year old. The officer who fired hasn't been named. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is handling the case — the same bureau whose statement already frames the shooting as justified. Who holds the system accountable when the system investigates itself?
