NAARPR statement on the Mississippi sham justification of the murder of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARAPR).
The Mississippi Attorney General’s office has declared the police murder of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley “justified.” This ruling is outrageous and shameful, and The National Alliance condemns it in the strongest terms. By clearing the Senatobia PD officer Hunter Foster who fired into a fleeing vehicle after seeing the child, the state signals that no victim is too young or innocent to escape deadly racist policing.
The ruling defies the truth. On June 14, officers from Senatobia PD and Tate County SO chased and fired into a vehicle carrying Kohen, his mother, and his aunt, who was injured. They knew a baby was inside. The only video shows the car driving away. The independent autopsy found shots were fired into the side, not the front, proving the vehicle was not driving toward officers. Officer Hunter Foster also faced prior misconduct allegations: a 2019 federal lawsuit accusing him of exaggerating a threat in a Waffle House parking lot confrontation in which he lied and said a vehicle tried to strike another officer, settled confidentially in 2022, and a 2022 DeSoto County traffic stop excessive force lawsuit was dismissed this March.
This outcome fits Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s track record of defending Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement and protecting killer cops. It continues Mississippi’s blood-soaked history of racial terror. The National Alliance does not accept this “justification” and will not allow Kohen Wiley’s story to be buried. All officers involved must be charged and convicted, and the corrupt system that protects them must face justice.
Justice for Kohen Wiley! Jail Killer Cops! Community Control of Police Now!