Senatobia officer who fatally shot 1-year-old Kohen Wiley resigns

The Mississippi police officer who fatally shot a 1-year-old Black child in a Walmart car park in June has resigned, alongside the interim chief of the department where the shooting took place.

Hunter Foster, who fired his gun at a moving vehicle in response to a shoplifting call in Senatobia in June, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, resigned from the Senatobia Police Department on Friday, Mayor Greg Graves said. Graves did not say whether Foster was asked to resign or did so on his own. Interim chief Angelica Maze stepped down, according to a resignation letter reported by local media.

The resignations come days after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said this week that “the use of force was justified” and cleared Foster of criminal wrongdoing. The child’s family has said the shooting was not justified.

Although Foster was cleared, his lawyer Martin Zummach told NBC News his client “resigned for the good of the city and the police department and to permit the process of healing.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the child’s family, called for a Department of Justice investigation, saying accountability cannot end at the resignation. “No mother should have to bury her baby over an allegation of shoplifting diapers,” he said.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said officers responding to the mid-June shoplifting call at Walmart encountered two adults and a juvenile child fleeing into a vehicle; when the driver drove towards officers, an officer “then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene.”