SENATOBIA, Miss. — The pressure is building, and now the nation’s oldest civil rights legal organization is standing in the room.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) has issued a formal statement calling for justice in the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley and demanding the release of “any available body-worn camera and surveillance footage” from the June 14, 2026 shooting in a Senatobia Walmart parking lot.
“Our hearts go out to the family of Kohen Wiley following this unconscionable loss,” said Jin Hee Lee, LDF’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. “We firmly echo the increasingly urgent calls for justice and transparency. A child was taken from his family through brutal police violence, and his family and the larger community deserve answers.”
The statement lands one day after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced her office had found the shooting “justified” — and one day after Amir Shakur, Samaria Rice of the Tamir Rice Foundation, Rodney Floyd of the Justice for George Floyd Committee, and Freedom First International filed an emergency media public-records request demanding ALL of the footage — bodycam, dashcam, and Walmart surveillance — with a statutory response deadline of Thursday, October 29.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety has confirmed to the Mississippi Free Press that surveillance footage “will be released to media organizations in short order via public records requests.”
Read that carefully. “Short order” is not a date. And surveillance footage alone is not all of it — it is not the bodycam, and it is not the dashcam. The coalition’s filing demands every angle, unredacted, by October 29.
The family’s attorney, Ben Crump, has made the same demand in plain terms: “If the footage supports the state’s decision, release it.”
Sgt. Hunter Foster, the officer identified as the subject of the investigation, remains on administrative leave. Neither Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, nor Latoya Ferrell has ever been charged with a crime.
The clock is running. Nine days remain. Release the tape.
Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
Sources: NAACP Legal Defense Fund statement (naacpldf.org); Mississippi Free Press; Action News 5.
