Mississippi Cop Kills One-Year-Old In Pursuit Of Allegedly Shoplifted Diapers

They shot into a car in hopes of preventing the alleged shoplifters from getting away, and now a child is dead.

In one of the most devastating examples of police brutality in recent memory, a police officer in Senatobia, Mississippi, shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley in a Walmart parking lot this past weekend. Was it because the child was some kind of a threat to them? Was he wearing a hoodie? Did he refuse to “comply”?

No. It was because someone at Walmart thought that his mother might have stolen a box of diapers.

Rather than just letting it go once Wiley’s mother and another woman got into the car, because, you know, it’s a box of diapers and stores like Walmart have insurance to cover shrinkage, the officers actually shot into the silver sedan in an attempt to stop them from leaving with what was most likely about $39 worth of merchandise.

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Was it a terrible mistake? Did they not know there was a literal baby in the car or that a box of diapers hardly ranks as grand larceny?

Well, we can’t be certain about the latter, but a statement released by the Senatobia police department acknowledges that the officers were well aware that Wiley was in the vehicle and shot anyway.

Because ACAB, they referred to the one-year-old as a “juvenile child.”

“Law enforcement officers responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart on U.S. 51. Upon arrival, officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” the statement read. “An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene. The subjects arrived at a local hospital where one juvenile child in the vehicle was pronounced deceased, and another subject had critical injuries. No law enforcement officers received any serious physical injury.”

For the record, the family denies that any shoplifting took place.

“I seen the officers take off running, not in the car, I’m talking about on feet, and these are the sheriffs and the police,” a witness told WREG. “They’re running through the parking lot and I see the car take off you know, so in my head, I’m like, I know they’re not chasing the car, they don’t think they’re going to catch the car. Then I hear gunshots and I’m like, I know they’re not shooting at a car that’s leaving in a public, this is Walmart.”

And yet they were.

Vellesiya Wiley, who is now being represented by famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump, said that she and her son were walking to her friend’s car when the friend was approached by police and accused of shoplifting; Wiley says they paid at self-checkout. Wiley said she kept going because it “had nothing to do” with her. The friend got in the car and started to drive away, and that’s when Wiley noticed police were running towards the car with their guns.

“I raised my baby up, trying to show them that he was in the car,” Wiley said in a video posted to Crump’s Instagram. “By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots.”

Police claimed that the car was driving towards them, but Wiley said they were on the right and the car was going left.

After they shot at the car, hitting Wiley in his ribcage, she said they “just kept telling the crowd that, ‘They were shoplifting. They were shoplifting.’ But I don’t know if they found anything, it’s nothing to find.”

And even if there were — no amount of diapers is worth killing a child over.

According to WREG, this is not the first horrific incident involving the Senatobia police or that particular Walmart.

Last year, at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman had a Taser pulled on her and was tackled to the ground after the department claimed she illegally parked in a handicapped spot. The woman claimed she had just dropped off her grandmother at the store.

In 2023, the case of a 10-year-old boy made national news after he was detained for urinating in public at an attorney’s office private parking lot. […]

In 2022, the police department and the housing authority went head-to-head after what many called a rough arrest of a 31-year-old man was caught on camera.

Since these incidents, the police department has new leadership.

Which, clearly, is not much better than the old leadership.

Clearly, they haven’t learned much from those incidents or even from this one, as they actually tear-gassed a group of people who were protesting Wiley’s killing in the parking lot of the Walmart on Tuesday.

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I worked in retail for a long time, and the only time I ever even called mall security was on the guy who kept trying to jack off behind the earring stands at The Icing. The loss prevention rule is and always should be that you discourage it as best you can with customer service and simply being around and visible, but when they leave with shit, you let them go, because a pair of cheap earrings or a tube top or a box of diapers is not worth your safety or anyone else’s. Every manager I ever had, no matter how shitty, was clear about that, and for good reason. “It’s not worth it.”

And sure, that was partially also because the lawsuit that someone might file against you if you confront them and are wrong, or that you or your family might file if you confront them and are hurt or killed, are not “worth it,” but the truth of it stands. It’s not worth it. It was not worth Kohen Wiley’s life to recover a box of diapers.

At most — at most! — if you are at a place like Walmart that has security, unarmed security guards can confront them in the parking lot. There is no need to involve police and there is certainly no need for police to involve a gun. Not over a box of diapers that cost, at most, $39, and will no longer be needed because the child they were for is now dead.