A White Cop Fatally Shot a 1 Yr Old Black Baby in a Walmart Parking Lot in Mississippi; Massa Media Attempts to Normalize the Murder, Seeks Public Quiescence to Unprovoked, Barbaric Use of Force

Kohen Kartier Wiley was a 1-year-old child from Senatobia, Mississippi, who was fatally shot by police on June 14, 2026, in the parking lot of a Walmart. The incident occurred while officers were responding to a shoplifting call; state investigators stated that the driver of the vehicle, carrying Kohen and his mother Vellesiya Wiley, drove toward officers, prompting an officer to fire into the car.

Kohen was pronounced dead at a local hospital, and a family friend riding in the vehicle was critically injured. While law enforcement claims the driver nearly struck an officer, Kohen’s mother stated she was attempting to show officers the baby in her arms and that the car was not driving aggressively. The involved officer has been placed on administrative leave, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is conducting an independent probe.

Ben Crump is representing the family.

From [HERE] “One-Year-Old Boy Killed After Officer Fires at Vehicle in Mississippi,” said the New York Times headline (6/16/26). So, a “one-year-old boy”—what most people would call a baby—was “killed after” a police officer fired at a vehicle, but there’s no verb you could use to connect those two things?

The Times subhed continued that pacifying work:

It is not entirely clear what led up to the shooting, but the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said that police officers were responding to a shoplifting call.

“Ohh, shoplifting…!” we’re evidently supposed to say, before turning the page; that might make the baby murder make sense. I don’t need to say that baby was Black.

There will be more coverage of this heartbreaking, infuriating news about cops in Senatobia, Mississippi, called to the five-alarm crisis of someone purportedly shoplifting diapers, opening fire into a car whose driver “allegedly drove toward them.”

But in the meantime, please think hard about reporting that tells you to calm down, that suggests that, just maybe, nothing wrong happened at all. As ABC News (6/18/26) put it in a piece on how the “officer involved in shooting outside Walmart that killed 1-year-old boy” has been placed on leave: “One-year-old Kohen Wiley was killed, according to the family’s attorney.”

So maybe he’s not dead? Or he died from something other than the gun of the “involved officer”? Caution in reporting is valuable, but when it’s mainly deployed to protect the inflicters of state violence (FAIR.org, 7/11/16), you have to ask if it’s really a principle at all.