Lynn Fitch shields the cop who killed a baby in Senatobia

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · October 20, 2026

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch ruled the fatal shooting of one-year-old Kohen Wiley justified, protecting a racist police department from accountability for a killing over diapers.

A one-year-old baby is dead. He was killed by a police officer during a call about stolen diapers. Now, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch says that killing was "justified." This is not a legal finding. It is a state-sponsored whitewash. Fitch is not protecting the law; she is protecting a badge. She has decided that the life of a Black child is worth less than the comfort of a police officer.

The lie of justified force

The facts of the day are a nightmare. On June 14, Senatobia officers responded to a shoplifting call at a Walmart. They alleged that Vellesiya Wiley and Latoya Ferrell stole diapers and baby clothes. Neither woman has been charged with a crime. Officials have not released any evidence of shoplifting.

As reported by The Guardian and CNN, the women and a child were leaving the parking lot when officers drew weapons. Vellesiya Wiley lifted her son, Kohen Wiley, to show the officers a child was in the car. Sgt Hunter Foster, who is white, fired into the vehicle. The gunfire killed Kohen and wounded Latoya Ferrell.

The state is selling a specific story. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation alleged the driver drove toward officers and almost struck one. But the evidence tells a different tale. Ben Crump released an independent autopsy showing Kohen was shot from the side of the car, not the front. Vellesiya Wiley refuted the police account. She stated the officers were on the right side while the driver drove toward the left.

The cruelty is in the silence. Law enforcement officials have not released the footage of the shooting. Ben Crump noted that the family has not seen the footage nearly three months later. If the state believes the killing was justified, they should show the world. Instead, they hide the tape and tell a grieving mother to trust a process that has already failed her. Vellesiya Wiley said, “I watched my baby take his first breath, and I watched my baby take his last breath.”

A department built on hate

This shooting did not happen in a vacuum. The Senatobia Police Department has a long record of targeting Black residents. Senatobia is approximately 40% Black. The department treats that population like an occupied territory.

In 2023, a Senatobia officer arrested and jailed a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public. That child was sentenced to three months’ probation. Last year, an officer threatened a Black woman with a Taser over a handicapped parking space at the same Walmart where Kohen died.

The rot goes to the top. Former Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired by the city’s board of aldermen. As reported by People.com, Vanderford used racist slurs in private text messages. Even the officer who shot Kohen was accused of making a racially offensive remark to a coworker days before the shooting.

The world remembers the Shooting of Tamir Rice. In that case, a child was killed by an officer reacting to a perceived threat that was not proportional to the situation. Senatobia is that same story. It is a culture where Black children are viewed as threats before they are viewed as children.

The machinery of the cover-up

Lynn Fitch is the perfect architect for this cover-up. She is the first Republican attorney general in Mississippi since 1878. Her career is a map of partisan power. She joined the lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election. She spent up to $558,000 on PR and law firms to dismantle reproductive rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Fitch does not serve the public. She serves concentrated power. She has been accused of awarding state contracts to campaign donors in pay-to-play deals. She has even used her office to intimidate her own step-mother. When she looks at a dead baby and a police officer, she sees a political calculation.

This is the Shooting of Michael Brown all over again. The shared mechanism is simple: state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies is routinely shielded by official narratives of 'justified' force to protect the police apparatus. We saw this script during the Death of George Floyd, when the state first tried to justify a murder as a necessary response to the victim's actions.

The state uses "justified" as a shield. It allows them to bury the truth and protect the officer from the consequences of his actions. By clearing Sgt Hunter Foster, Fitch is telling every officer in Senatobia that they can fire into a car with a baby in it and the state will have their back.

The state will likely continue to suppress the footage. They will use investigative secrecy to protect the department from liability. This is the same playbook Fitch used in the Dobbs case to control the narrative and shield state actions from scrutiny. She knows how to weaponize the machinery of the state to bury the truth.

Justice requires more than a press release. It requires the immediate release of all body-camera and surveillance footage. It requires criminal charges for Sgt Hunter Foster. It requires a federal civil rights lawsuit to pierce the shield Fitch has built.

Lynn Fitch has ruled that killing a baby over a pack of diapers is acceptable. She has chosen the officer over the infant and the department over the truth. In doing so, she has proven that in Mississippi, the law is not a shield for the vulnerable, but a weapon for the powerful.

Lynn Fitch shields the cop who killed a baby in Senatobia

The lie of justified force

A department built on hate

The machinery of the cover-up

Sources