Mississippi police department fire investigated as arson weeks after toddler's shooting ruled justified

Agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the fire as arson, and the investigation is being handled by the US attorney general’s office of the northern district of Mississippi. The Senatobia police department did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

The department has been embroiled in controversy after June, when then sergeant Hunter Foster shot Kohen Wiley as the one-year-old sat in his mother's arms in a Walmart parking lot. Foster, who is white, was responding to a report of an alleged shoplifting; Kohen, his mother and the driver of the vehicle were Black.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the shooting, alleged that the driver of the vehicle in which Kohen sat "drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one". Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Wiley family, released an independent autopsy that indicated Kohen was shot from the side of the car, not the front.

In mid-October, Lynn Fitch, Mississippi's attorney general, announced in a statement that the shooting was "justified". Foster resigned from the police force shortly after Fitch's statement. Shortly after Kohen was killed, activists and community members led protests, including one outside the Senatobia police department, in hopes of receiving answers about the shooting.

LaSandra Williams, Kohen's paternal grandmother, spoke at a press conference Crump held about video footage of the shooting: "After what I've seen today, I'm having a difficult time understanding the word 'justified'. I don't understand how it's OK for someone to take a sweet, innocent soul - Lord knows I miss him so much."

The shooting was the most recent in a series of incidents involving Senatobia's police force. The month before Fitch's statement, Senatobia, which is about 40% Black, fired its police chief, who allegedly used racial slurs. A year before Kohen was killed, at the same Walmart, an officer forced a Black woman from her car and pointed a stun gun at her in front of her children after she parked in a handicap space to wait for her grandmother, who was shopping in the store; the woman was driving a vehicle with a handicap parking tag. In 2023, an officer arrested and placed in a cell a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in public. The child was later sentenced to three months' probation.

Kohen would have turned two last weekend. The Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, an activist group, organised a giveaway at the city's community center to celebrate what would have been the toddler's birthday. Families who attended received diapers, wipes, food and other items.