Jackson, MississippiAP —
The fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by police who were responding to a shoplifting call this week has ignited simmering tensions between police and Black residents in the small town of Senatobia, Mississippi.
The death of Kohen Wiley is the latest in a series of troubling encounters with police that have outraged community members in recent years. It has led to protests and calls for greater police accountability in the town of 8,000, with some civil rights activists pointing to Kohen’s death as another example of a Black life lost over something of nominal value — in this case, allegedly stolen diapers.
“We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child,” Bernice King, the daughter of civil right icon Martin Luther King, Jr., said in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse.”
There are still many unanswered questions about the shooting and what led up to it.
