The death of a 1-year-old Mississippi boy who died after a police officer shot at a vehicle he was inside of during a shoplifting call is sparking questions among family members.
“It didn’t have to happen this way. It could’ve been handled differently,” LiCole Wiley, a relative to those involved in the alleged shoplifting incident told local news station WREG.
Officers from the Senatobia Police Department and deputies from the Tate County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shoplifting report at a local Walmart on Sunday, where they encountered two adults and a child fleeing the store in a vehicle, according to a statement by the The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
One witness told the outlet in a separate report that the officers were already waiting in the parking lot as two women exited the store. The witness said one of the suspects was holding a box of diapers, while the other was holding a baby.
As authorities were attempting to stop the vehicle, police claim the driver drove in their direction and nearly hit one of them, prompting an officer to fire at the car, state investigators said in the release. The vehicle fled the scene, but later arrived at a local hospital where the child was pronounced dead and an adult was treated for critical injuries.
Family members of those involved in the incident identified the child as 1-year-old Kohen Wiley and the suspects as his mother and aunt.
“I don’t know anything right now. My grandson gone. I just want justice,” Kohen’s grandfather Carlos Haynes told Memphis TV station WMC.
Carolyn Stokes, Kohen’s great-grandmother, told the news station, “The police department not telling us anything. They removed the baby’s body without anybody seeing it.”
“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,” she said.
Other family members questioned the officer’s use of force and demanded accountability from the police.
“Whatever the incident may have come to, it still didn’t need for you to shoot two adults and a baby that was not even a threat to you,” Wiley told the news station.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said agents will share their findings with the attorney general’s office once the investigation is complete.
