Shooting death of 1-year-old boy by Mississippi police puts scrutiny on department

The fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by police at a Walmart in Mississippi has sparked protests and demands for transparency in the state’s investigation after other incidents in the community in recent years have sown distrust with law enforcement.

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Some Senotobia residents told NBC News that they believe the local police department has escalated interactions with the public that generated unnecessary arrests or uses of force. The shooting Sunday in a Walmart parking lot that led to the boy’s death is only the latest instance that residents say must result in better police training.

“We lost a child because of carelessness, recklessness of the police,” said Breshari Faulkner, 27, who was born in Senatobia, a town of 8,500 people about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee.

“This was going to eventually end up with them killing someone because they overreact on small things that shouldn’t escalate,” added Faulker, who was handcuffed on the ground by Senatobia police in the same Walmart parking lot in May 2025 during an incident over a handicap parking space that was caught on police body camera .

On Sunday, Faulkner was at a Little Caesars across the highway from the Walmart when shots rang out at about 2:05 p.m. At first, she thought the noise was due to a tornado siren, but eventually, she said, she saw other police cars racing around the curb to get to the store. Someone burst into the restaurant, she said, warning, “‘Y’all need to get out, y’all need to get out. They’re shooting at the Walmart.’”

Senatobia police were at the Walmart to respond to a call about an alleged shoplifting and encountered two people with a child fleeing from the store into a vehicle, state investigators said after the shooting.

The officers “attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” investigators said. “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.”

None of the officers were seriously injured, investigators said.

The Senatobia Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, including on questions about the identity and employment status of the officer involved. Following the shooting Sunday, the city said the officer was placed on leave and the department said on Facebook that it was “committed to full transparency.”

“As the investigation progresses and facts are verified, we will share as much information as possible,” the department said.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, identified the child who was killed as Kohen Wiley. He said the boy was in a vehicle with his mother and a family friend when he was shot. The friend was critically injured, Crump said.

“His mother, who has not been charged with any crime, says she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car,” Crump said in a statement Tuesday.

“They fired anyway, leading to the death of an innocent 1-year-old,” Crump added. “We intend to seek justice for baby Kohen and the life that was stolen from him.”

The identities of the child’s mother and the family friend were not immediately available, and the child’s family did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said it was gathering evidence and would share its findings with the state attorney general’s office.

Police bodycam video and other possible evidence won’t be released until after the state’s independent investigation is complete and presented to the attorney general’s office for potential criminal charges, state Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said at a news conference Tuesday. He didn’t provide a timeline for that process and declined to discuss other details of the shooting.

Geoffrey Alpert, a policing expert and criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said law enforcement officers are generally trained not to shoot in front of a moving vehicle and to avoid injury by stepping out of its path.

“A bullet is not going to stop the car,” Alpert said. “And if you shoot the driver, then you have an unguided missile.”

That officers may have been aware that a child was with the adults as they left the store is also concerning, he added.

“You don’t want to take the chance of hitting an innocent bystander,” Alpert said. “That’s what makes it so horrific is the presence of this child.”

Senatobia has been in the national spotlight previously for issues involving policing and children. Three years ago, officers arrested a 10-year-old boy for urinating next to his mother’s car while she was inside an attorney’s office. The child was sentenced to probation and required to write a two-page report about Kobe Bryant.

Mark Lesure, 41, a lifelong Senatobia resident, said this most recent incident involving Kohen made him “very angry, furious.”

“We’ve had a lot of situations of police brutality that led up to this right here,” said Lesure, who said he had his own physical encounter with the previous Senatobia police chief , who was white, in 2023. “All the police brutality that led up to this was left unchecked. If it had been checked in the past, maybe we wouldn’t be talking about this baby being killed.”

Lesure said the local community has “no trust” in police after previous incidents. He said the community felt that any time local police were called, it “immediately puts a Black person’s life in danger or in danger of going to jail” unnecessarily.

Lesure said the Walmart where the shooting occurred draws a lot of customers from the surrounding rural areas.

“All of them come to this Walmart,” he said.

Demonstrators gathered Tuesday evening outside of the store, prompting the location to temporarily close. In videos shared online , law enforcement could be seen lined up outside of the entrance wearing respirators as they deployed tear gas.

Marquell Bridges, a community activist from Senatobia who organized the protest, said demonstrators were nonviolent.

“The only violence came from the police department when they decided to tear gas peaceful protesters,” he said.

“This is definitely about Kohen, but it’s not just about Kohen,” Bridges added. “It’s about a long history of overpolicing, racism and brutalization that the people have been suffering, and the people are saying we’re not going to take it anymore.”

In a statement Tuesday, Senatobia officials said they were committed to cooperating fully with the state investigation.

“We understand that emotions are high and that many questions remain. We respectfully ask our community to avoid speculation and the spread of unverified information while the investigation is underway,” the statement said.

It acknowledged Kohen’s death as “a heartbreaking tragedy” and extended condolences to the family. Walmart also said it would assist in the state’s investigation.

Faulkner, who was across the street from the Walmart when the shooting occurred, said the chaos brought back memories of her own police encounter in that same parking lot on Mother’s Day 2025.

In a police bodycam video released to the media, officers are heard questioning Faulkner about a handicap parking tag in her car and whether it belonged to her. Faulkner told them that it was her grandmother’s, who was inside the store. She offered to move her car while officers asked her if her grandmother actually came out of the vehicle.

Faulkner was also asked for her identification. As the situation grew tense, Faulkner, who had her then 2- and 3-year-old children in the back of the car, asked an officer for a supervisor. Eventually, the incident escalated with Faulkner being pulled from the car and handcuffed on the ground, the video shows. The officer accused Faulkner of “resisting.”

“I don’t feel safe in here,” Faulkner said in the video. “She grabbed me out my car. My kids is in my car.”

Faulkner was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and a handicap parking violation. In a statement at the time , Senatobia police said “this incident could’ve very easily ended with a citation or even a warning until the actions of the suspect escalated this encounter.”

But nine months later, Faulkner said, she went to a meeting where she signed a form saying the charges were dropped. Senatobia police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about her case.

Looking back, Faulkner said, “I honestly thought I was going to be killed in front of my children.”

Knowing a child has since lost his life makes her more certain that local police reforms are necessary — or at least conversations with the community to help ease the tension.

“It’s not all of the police,” she said. “But I don’t want to see anyone else get hurt because of the ones who can’t communicate.”