The police shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley as he sat in his mother’s lap in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, Miss., in June “was justified,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office announced on Monday.
“Today, the Office of the Attorney General announced it has completed the review of a June 14, 2026 incident in Senatobia involving one officer with the Senatobia Police Department,” the Republican attorney general’s statement said. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified. Pursuant to Section 45-1-6 of the Mississippi Code, the review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”
Officers were responding to a shoplifting call alleging that Wiley’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and Latoya Ferrell had stolen a pack of diapers. The women exited the store with the child as officers arrived, entered their vehicle and began to leave the parking lot. Officers drew their weapons, and Vellesiya Wiley lifted her son up to show the officers that a child was in the car. One officer fired into the vehicle, killing the baby as she held him. A bullet also wounded Ferrell.
Consider this a warning: We can speak about the horrors of this case without leaning into misogyny and attacking this woman for how she looks.
Comments attacking anyone for how they look will be subject to removal.
I don’t think there could possibly be a greater bashing of her appearance than this warning post.
Seriously, this is more insulting than anything I’d have expected to see.
Context would have revealed that there were already comments directly bashing how she looks before I made my mod comment.
How about the murderers for what they were wearing?
Oh great, Reddit style modding. We’ve learned nothing.
Blocking this community
Thanks for leaving!
Jinkies, amirite?
Maybe there should be a location for this? Just to blow off steam and know it’s not serious or is more so an emotional outburst.
A location for bashing how a woman looks? You’re on the internet. It’s fucking everywhere here.
Not specifically for that. More generally for emotional outbursts.
Edit: it’s sad to see people just down voting instead of actually having a discussion. Maybe a tad cowardly in my book, at least reductive behavior.
I had a full conversation with you and you just want to be cheeky.
Say it with your chest or gtfo.
I’m not talking about you unless you are using multiple accounts to down vote?
No, I’m talking directly to your beating around the bush in what your initial comment meant.
By all means - expand on what you meant right here.
I mean I meant what I said. If people want to have inappropriate emotional outbursts (typically from a source of anger) then it may be useful to have a dedicated location for that instead of it spilling out into discussions.
You replied directly to my warning about bashing someone for how they look. Consider context.
There’s !offmychest@lemmy.world and a variety of others that are similar.
We can deviate a little from the conversation as other comments here have and others across Lemmy typically do without question.
I have many comments here, you could’ve replied directly to them instead. Of course I’m going to think that you’re looking for a place to bash women if you reply directly to that comment asking.
You’re more than welcome to continue to ignore context throughout the Fediverse, I don’t really care what you do.
I didn’t take the time to read all of your comments, I apologize for that. It’s still an open question of if there should be a location for emotional outbursts, not specific to what you’re saying or what you’re saying I’m saying. Of course people will have emotional outbursts and it’s a real aspect of the human condition so it may be useful to have a location for that.
I love this. Thank you.
Better not watch Jimmy Kimmel or any political comedy then!
I don’t because they fucking suck! Good check, bro
I’m literally on lemmy and not doing that so what the fuck are you talking about?
See sibling comment, but the idea is that attacking someone’s appearance (including genetic/unchangeable things) is super common in public discourse in e.g.the US and A.
And we should be calling it out there too.
Agreed!
Okay? Something being “super common” doesn’t mean shit. We don’t want it here.
Okay?
No. It isn’t. That’s why we are having this conversation.
I also think it’s bad
Does this look like a comedic post to you?
I’m saying it’s super mainstream to denigrate or make fun of the appearances of people as part of criticizing their actions or politics.
Personally I find it immoral and stupid. Saying e.g. “Trump is fat” as a way of showing your disapproval won’t hurt him and will just make things worse for others, but it’s so common that I usually don’t even bother making a fuss.
I respect your position and good luck maintaining it.
Most of those making fun of the way Trump looks (at least in my experience) tend to be focusing more on his bad spray tan, and that’s more criticising his poor judgement of voluntarily going out looking like that.
Removed by mod
He was…crawling right at them? Might have overpowered them? And of course it happened at a walmart.
What would have happened if the lady got away with a pack of stolen diapers? Worth firing guns over I guess?
I dont even recognize this country anymore. Its barbaric.
For shoplifting diapers? I can’t even…
Yeah, but diapers kinda sounds like diamonds and minor kinda sounds like miner and diamonds are mined by miners who sometimes unionise but not like police unions which are good but workers unions which are like socialism which is like communism which is bad and anti-American and why do you hate America what do you want the terrorists to win?
I see Tucker Carlson finally joined the fediverse!
Just when I thought America couldn’t get any worse…
to protect the children, tho.
Shooting a child in her mother embrace is incident ? from which universe ?
And nothing will change until enough people get together to change it. We all have three votes, our political vote, our financial vote (how we choose to spend our money), and finally a vote with our life in protest / revolution. Every government today exists because people voted with their life, they fought often mortally to create that government. It’s the duty of civilians to vote for the country and government they want.
American cops will never understand that they can just take a license plate and go knock on the door later, no, “I said stop and they are not stopping! The punishment for disobedience is death!”
Yeah it is the entire point. It’s an extra charge they can guarantee if they don’t comply.
And carry all that ammo both ways?
Not both ways. They are gonna unload at her home.
This was always my train of thought. Why not just get the license plate and let the suspect think they got away, then just catch them at home later. American cops are just trigger happy assholes.
You can steal plates or simply not have plates. What then? The problem is cops treat everyone as if they are extremely dangerous individual, without any evidence to the contary. I wouldnt even put it pass these idiots from shooting the infant even if the mother did comply. They are that damn paranoid.
They can run the plates and check if they match the car or if the car itself is listed stolen in literal seconds…
American cops choose violence.
So, she stole diapers, didn’t have a weapon, I can’t imagine she was driving while holding up a child, and posed some sort of imminent threat?
Where is the immediate threat to life and limb?
the cops will lie to create one, they always do. Hopefully it was being recorded-- its the only way to have a chnace of justice when cops are present.
Where is the immediate threat to life and limb?
They’re claiming that the other woman was driving the vehicle towards officers, but shooting at a moving vehicle is never justified anyway.
It’s all bullshit to protect the police here.
Yeah, shooting at the driver of a moving vehicle should almost never be justified, except in extreme cases.
Why would it ever be justified? Shooting the driver doesn’t cause the car to screech to a stop, it just turns a controlled moving vehicle into an uncontrolled moving vehicle.
Life and limb of shareholder money.
That is fucked up.
Even if we accept the premise she was driving straight towards them, shooting her does not stop the vehicle.
I don’t accept that premise, by the way.
For a non violent property crime (of stealing diapers, probably one of the most ethical crimes you could do as a poor person) they could have mortised the license plate, they had video of her, they could have stepped aside and could have shot the vehicle’s tires.
I see no universe where this makes any sense.
Not to disagree with your central point, but shooting out tires is extremely impractical in real life. It still won’t stop the vehicle, and you’ll almost certainly miss.
Yeah, please don’t go shooting a gun in public. This isn’t the movies. Just write down the license plate number and then go to their house. Simple.
Actually in this case, it was for stealing diapers. So just look the other way, go to lunch and call it a day.
If they really wanted to “set things right” they could have had their police department pay for the diapers, but I won’t hold my breath
if there were any evidence that supported the cops’ story, they would have released it.
the fact that none of the footage from WALMART or any dash or body cam footage has been released tells you everything you need to know.
They don’t even need to, they know who she is they can just charge her bank account directly with zero violence, zero public officer duty labor hours, zero weapon discharge bullets costs.
When you have a hammer and a ducktape, have been trained to only use a hammer, taught that everything is a nail, all you can do is hammer nails.
The tape is just there. Hammer is all that’s ever used
Removed by mod
Slurs fucking suuuck!
Thank you for calling it out, I hadn’t seen their original comment before. Slurs do suck and definitely break the rules here. Feel free to report next time so I can nip it earlier :)
Timeline sucks, life should not be like this but you should ignore everything and let the corruption happen while censoring unhappy comments!
What a way to justify using slurs.
Great job censoring discourse! The overlords love this very much, hope you get your promotion
Slurs aren’t discourse.
DISCOURSE is verbal interchange of ideas; especially : conversation.
Stop me if you heard this one
Senatobia police said the officer believed the driver was moving toward him.
“So there I was! Getting ran over by a mother that stole dipers. When my training kicked in and I shot the first black male there. God saved me!”
Lookout, Jimbo! She’s comin’ right for us!
This, but unironically.
https://www.southparkstudios.com/video-clips/61i3mb/south-park-let-s-get-those-kids
How the fuck is shooting into a moving vehicle ever justified?
Release the body cam and the Walmart video.
What really gets me is that tracking down vehicles is like the purpose of Flock and other ALPRs and dead people usually can’t hit the brakes.
So even having had a chance to see the license plate personally and living in a world where helicopters and magnetic AirTag like devices exist if you don’t have access to Flock or some other ability to simply follow the fucking car for whatever reason they still think they were justified in killing a child in order to… not stop the car before it would have hit an officer if it was going to because, like I said earlier, dead people don’t generally have the ability to stop cars…
And let just be totally honest, if you have time to register speed and direction of a car, unholster, unsafety, cock, aim, and fire, then you or whoever else had time to get out of the fucking way of the car!!!
Minor quibble. The vast majority of police in the USA are issued pistols (Glocks) without manual safeties. So that wouldn’t slow them down!
Explains why they are always shooting themselves in the foot.
Ya hear that folks? Shoplifting diapers for your child is legally punishiable by death but if you brutally rape someone else’s child, you can be president of an entire nation!
Scorched earth people. NEVER forgive, and NEVER let them forget they not only allowed this, but approved it.
legally punishiable by the death of your child but
Ftfy it’s worse than what you said
My takeaway from this is that any time I see a cop, there’s a chance they shot a baby to death and suffered no consequences? Are they even human at this point?
“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There’s an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.” - Dune, Frank Herbert
Substitute firing a weapon for chewing off a leg.
Jesus, if they are trying to paint themselves in the best possible light with this, that place is a shithole. There isn’t any part of this that even warrants pulling a gun. A fucking pack of diapers? No weapons? And a known baby in the vehicle?
Why did any of that need to be dealt with immediately and with deadly force?
