What Kind of Country Kills a Baby After a Shoplifting Call Regarding Diapers?!
Kohen Wiley’s death forces a question America keeps trying to avoid: when did property become worth more than human life?
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Senatobia, Mississippi. Sunday, June 14, 2026. 2:05 PM.
A witness outside the Walmart on U.S. Highway 51 in Senatobia, Mississippi says she saw two women walk out of the store. One was carrying a single box of diapers. One was carrying an infant.
She watched officers approach. She watched the car pull away. She then watched law enforcement chase the vehicle on foot through the parking lot.
Then she heard gunshots.
The occupants drove to a nearby hospital. Kohen Kartier Wiley, one year old, was pronounced dead.
TL;DR
On June 14, 2026, a police officer fired into a vehicle during a Walmart shoplifting response in Senatobia, Mississippi, killing 1-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley and critically injuring another adult in the vehicle. The officer hasn’t been publicly identified. As of recent reporting, no charges have been announced against anyone. Investigators say the body camera footage won’t be released until their investigation concludes. When the community gathered outside the Walmart to demand answers, law enforcement deployed tear gas. The family has retained civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner. Kohen’s mother has now spoken publicly for the first time, saying she raised her son up to show officers he was in the car before the shots were fired.
What We Know
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says officers from the Senatobia Police Department and Tate County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported shoplifting call at the Walmart on U.S. 51 shortly after 2 PM.
The bureau’s preliminary statement which it notes is subject to change, says officers encountered “two subjects and a juvenile child” entering a vehicle, that when officers tried to stop it the driver “moved toward them and nearly struck one”, and that an officer then fired.
The state’s preliminary statement says officers encountered two adults and a juvenile child before the shooting... Mississippi Free Press notes that this language appears to place Kohen’s presence within officers’ awareness before the weapon was discharged.
The vehicle drove to a nearby hospital and Kohen was pronounced dead.
The other adult in the car, described by Kohen’s mother as a friend, and by some other family members as his aunt, was critically injured. Kohen’s mother was physically unharmed.
No officers were seriously injured.
The officer who fired has still not been publicly named.
Three days after a baby was killed, Senatobia has not told the public who pulled the trigger.
On Tuesday night, the city confirmed the officer was placed on administrative leave.
Bridges also alleges that a fellow officer filed a complaint against Foster for using racial slurs in the precinct just days before the shooting. Authorities have not confirmed this identification, and we are not publishing it as established fact. But the public shouldn’t have to rely on social media to find out who used lethal force against a car with a baby inside. Release the name.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said five agents are working the case, reviewing body camera video, dash camera footage, and Walmart’s surveillance footage. He stated the evidence won’t be released until the investigation concludes, citing the need to interview witnesses “without the threat of intimidation.” That process can take months. No timeline was given.
As of the latest reporting, no charges have been announced against anyone who was in that car. The Walmart temporarily closed in the aftermath of the shooting and protests, and reopened Wednesday morning.
What the Family Says
The family says no shoplifting happened.
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has now spoken publicly for the first time. In a video released Wednesday, she says she and her son and a friend were leaving the Walmart together when officers stopped her friend. Vellesiya says she kept walking toward the car because the situation “had nothing to do with me.” Her friend then got into the car and they began to back out.
That’s when Vellesiya says she saw officers coming toward the car with guns drawn.
“I raised my baby up trying to show them that he was in the car,” she said. She says her friend was driving toward the other side of the parking lot, away from officers, not toward them. “By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots. One of the shots hit him in his ribcage.”
Vellesiya also says her friend was buying diapers and the purchase is likely captured on the store’s self-checkout cameras. She has not been charged with any crime.
Two accounts, One video.
Release it.
The MBI says the driver moved toward officers, nearly striking one, before the shooting.
Kohen’s mother says the car was moving toward the other side of the lot, away from officers, when she looked up and saw guns drawn. She says the officers were on the right side of the car, the car was driving toward the left. She raised her baby to show them he was inside. Three to four shots were fired anyway.
Both accounts are now on record. Body camera footage, dash camera footage, and Walmart surveillance video would answer this question…
None of it has been released.
Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner, representing the family, said in a statement: Kohen’s mother had not been charged with any crime, and she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car before they fired.
“They fired anyway,” Crump said.
Attorney Van Turner, speaking exclusively to local media, asked the question the family and community are now waiting to have answered: “We want to see the body cam footage from the officers. We also want to see the footage from Walmart, and the family is just wondering why the officer dispatched his service gun, knowing that there was a child in the car.”
Community advocate Marquell Bridges added: “She was skipping and playing with her child, Kohen, to the car moments earlier, not fleeing a theft.”
Kohen’s grandfather, Carlos Haynes, told reporters: “My grandson gone. I just want justice.”
His great-grandmother, Carolyn Stokes, described what the family received in the aftermath: “All we know is that a car was shot up and a 1-year-old baby was killed, and then nobody tells us anything, like we’re not anybody.”
His grandmother, Licole Wiley, the sister of the critically injured woman, put it: “Policeman shot, opened fire in a public setting, over allegedly some Pampers.
Let’s Talk About Those Diapers
Whether shoplifting actually occurred has not been officially confirmed.
The family denies it. Vellesiya says her friend was buying the diapers and that the purchase is likely captured on self-checkout cameras. No shoplifting charges have been filed against anyone. Even Commissioner Tindell told a reporter it would be up to local law enforcement to determine whether the allegation was credible. The Walmart surveillance footage would settle this question in minutes. It has not been released.
But here is what we need to say, clearly, whether or not the allegation turns out to be true:
If someone tried to take a box of diapers because she couldn’t afford them, that’s not a criminal to be feared. That’s a parent trying to care for a baby.
A 1-year-old dying because of what started as a complaint about diapers does not become less outrageous if the diapers were unpaid for. It becomes more so, because it means the state would be responding to poverty with lethal force.
Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation, with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting a 2024 poverty rate of 17.8%, among the highest in the country. Its child poverty numbers are even more devastating. Census data showed Mississippi had one of the nation’s highest child poverty rates in 2021 at 27.7%, and the 2024 Mississippi KIDS COUNT Factbook counted 189,000 children, 28% of Mississippi’s children, living in poverty, ranking the state 50th on that indicator. Black children are disproportionately harmed. America’s Health Rankings, using Census ACS data, puts Mississippi’s Black child poverty rate at 41.7%, compared with 12.9% for white children.
Diapers routinely cost families about $80 to $100 or more per month per baby roughly $960 to $1,200 a year, and for families already living close to the edge, that’s not a small expense. The poorest 20% of Americans who buy diapers spend nearly 14% of their after-tax income on them.
And the pressure hasn’t stopped.
In 2025, AP reported that Procter & Gamble planned price increases on about a quarter of its U.S. products in part because of tariff costs, while Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies, still expected about $170 million in tariff-related costs for the year.
You can’t buy diapers with SNAP.
You can’t buy them with WIC.
They are treated as nonfood necessities, even though a baby can’t stay clean, dry, or healthy without them.
Nationally, the latest NDBN Diaper Check 2026 found that 40% of U.S. households with young children under age 4 in diapers report diaper insecurity, including 62% of low-income households. Black and Hispanic families are hit especially hard: the same report found diaper insecurity among 63% of Black households and 49% of Hispanic households, compared with 33% of white households.
Less than two months before Kohen Wiley was killed, Mississippi’s Legislature had already chosen not to remove the state’s diaper tax. A Mississippi Today Ideas essay by public health advocate Chelesa Presley noted that Mississippi families still pay a 7% sales tax on diapers, even as the state moved to reduce the grocery tax from 7% to 5%. The Mississippi Department of Revenue confirmed that grocery-tax reduction began July 1, 2025. Meanwhile, Magnolia Tribune reported that lawmakers debated adding diapers to Mississippi’s Second Amendment sales-tax holiday, but the diaper language was stripped while items like firearms, accessories, archery equipment, and ammunition remained tax-free for two days.
A diaper is not a luxury. A baby does not wait. And in Mississippi, one of the highest-poverty states in the country, the state still takes its cut every time a parent buys one.
This is to put the cruelty of this moment into perspective.
We’re living in an economy where families are struggling to afford basic necessities like diapers, where parents can’t use food assistance to buy them, and where a reported shoplifting call involving diapers at Walmart, a corporation that reported more than $462 billion in U.S. net sales in fiscal year 2025, ended with a 1-year-old child dead. Stealing is not the answer, and Kohen’s family says no shoplifting happened, but what kind of country are we becoming when an alleged property crime tied to caring for a baby can escalate into police gunfire in a parking lot? What kind of economy makes diapers feel out of reach, and what kind of justice system answers poverty with bullets?
This Has Happened Before...
At This Same Walmart!
This is not the first time the Senatobia Police Department has faced scrutiny at this location.
Last year, at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman named Breshari Faulkner had a Taser drawn on her and was taken to the ground after officers claimed she’d illegally parked in a handicapped space.
Faulkner said she had just dropped off her grandmother and had a valid handicap placard. Body camera footage of the incident was later released by the department.
“Senatobia Police Department get away with too much stuff,” Carolyn Stokes said. “I hear about it all the time. It’s in the news all the time.”
The department’s Sunday statement said it is “committed to full transparency.”
But again, the department has still not released the video…
For those who want to make their voices heard, the Senatobia Police Department’s publicly listed non-emergency number is 662-562-5643. The City of Senatobia directory also lists Police Chief Harold Vanderford at hvanderford@cityofsenatobiams.gov, and the city’s general contact email as contact@cityofsenatobiams.gov. If you reach out, do it peacefully and respectfully: ask for the release of the body-camera footage, dash-camera footage, Walmart surveillance video, and the name of the officer who fired.
Kohen Wiley’s death is being framed in some coverage as an isolated tragedy, something investigators will sort out in time, something to wait on.
This is what democratic failure looks like at the local level.
Not just in federal executive orders or congressional votes. In parking lots. In traffic stops. In the front seat of a silver sedan at a Walmart in Mississippi, on a Sunday afternoon.
State power used with lethal force in response to an alleged property crime. Evidence held by the agencies whose conduct is under scrutiny. The public asked to be patient. And when a grieving community took to the streets to demand basic answers, they were met with tear gas.
More than 200 people gathered in downtown Senatobia on Tuesday to demand answers for Kohen Wiley.
According to Mississippi Free Press, protesters moved along Front Street while police snipers watched from rooftops above vintage storefronts, including buildings that housed a soda shop and a pharmacy. Later that evening, protesters gathered outside the Walmart where Kohen was killed, and Action News 5 reported that law enforcement deployed tear gas in the parking lot.
A baby is killed during a shoplifting response. Three to four shots are fired. The community gathers. The state’s answer, again, is force.
Shooting into a moving vehicle is one of the most dangerous and heavily scrutinized uses of force in policing.
The Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy for federal law enforcement says deadly force may not be used solely to stop a fleeing suspect, and that firearms may not be discharged solely to disable a moving vehicle. The policy says officers may fire at a moving vehicle only if someone inside is threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle, or if the vehicle is being operated in a way that threatens death or serious physical injury and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appears to exist, including moving out of the vehicle’s path.
The Police Executive Research Forum, a national policing policy organization, goes further in its recommended best practices, urging agencies to prohibit shooting at or from a moving vehicle unless someone inside is using or threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle itself, with a narrow exception for apparent vehicle-based mass-casualty attacks. DOJ policy is binding on DOJ federal officers, and PERF guidance is not binding law, but both show how seriously national policing standards treat the danger of firing into moving vehicles.
What the Senatobia Police Department’s own policy says, and whether it was followed has not been disclosed. That disclosure belongs on the list of what the public needs.
This was a response to a reported shoplifting call. Mississippi Free Press reported that officers were responding to an allegation involving a box of diapers, while family members have denied that any shoplifting took place. The Guardian also reported that police were responding to a claim that someone attempted to steal diapers, that witnesses have disputed the official account, and that Kohen’s family is demanding the release of body-camera footage and Walmart surveillance video.
There is a name for a system where police power over life and death is exercised in response to alleged property crimes, where crucial evidence is withheld while agencies ask the public to wait, and where grieving communities are met with tear gas for demanding accountability. It isn’t democracy.
What We Need
The minimum floor here isn’t justice. It’s transparency. And it shouldn’t require a court order.
Release the body camera footage, the dash camera footage, and the Walmart surveillance video with independent oversight, not filtered through the agency under scrutiny
Publicly identify the officer who fired
Confirm whether anyone in the vehicle was charged with any crime, and if not, say so clearly
State how many shots were fired and where Kohen was located in the car relative to each one
Disclose the department’s use-of-force policy for shooting at moving vehicles and whether it was followed
Commit to an independent review that isn’t run on the timeline of the institutions being questioned
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has said it will send its findings to the attorney general’s office. That process needs to be soon, genuinely independent, and resistant to the quiet pressure that makes these cases disappear.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you’re following this story: Share it. The most important thing in accountability cases is sustained public attention. The news cycle will try to move on.
If you’re in Mississippi: Attend public meetings in Senatobia and Tate County. Make visible that your community is watching the MBI’s timeline and the Mississippi Attorney General response.
If you’re outside Mississippi: This story doesn’t stay in Mississippi, the same force, and silence shows up everywhere. Use whatever platform you have to amplify what his family is asking for. Transparency and honesty.
If you’re organizing: This belongs in your teach-ins, speeches, signs. This will keep happening until communities make it too uncomfortable for them to ignore.
What questions do you still have about this case? What are you seeing in your community? If you’re in Mississippi and watching this unfold, we especially want to hear from you:
JFC. An infant. This country, meanwhile, is trying to create a new law allowing the adoption of IVF embryos. And now this, over diapers that appear to have been paid for, not shoplifted, and even if it were otherwise, WTAF? TELL US HOW MUCH WE CARE ABOUT LIFE AND CHILDREN. 💔😢😡
Really...for diapers. Whatever happened to protect and serve?? Not aggression towards the cops. All cops involved need to be prosecuted.. the one that did this murder needs to be in prison for life at the least.