The state has spoken, but the camera has not.

In a small town south of Memphis, where the summer heat settles heavy and the Walmart parking lot has become an unlikely stage for grief, a decision arrived this week that many had been bracing for and others had been dreading. Mississippi's attorney general concluded that the use of force by a Senatobia police officer was justified in the June shooting death of one-year-old Kohen Wiley—a finding that closes one chapter of a legal process but leaves open a deeper, more difficult conversation about trust and accountability.

The shooting occurred in mid-June, when officers responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart. According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers attempted to stop a vehicle carrying Kohen, his mother Vellesiya Wiley, and a friend, Latoya Ferrell. The bureau stated that the car drove toward law enforcement, prompting an officer to fire into the vehicle, striking Kohen and critically injuring Ferrell. Kohen's mother has consistently denied that she or Ferrell stole anything, and neither woman has been charged with a crime.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch issued a brief statement on Monday: "In this incident, the Attorney General's Office found the use of force was justified". The review followed an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, as required under state law. The finding means no criminal charges will be filed against the officer who fired the shots.

For Kohen's family, the conclusion has not brought closure. Benjamin Crump, the nationally known civil rights attorney representing the family, objected sharply to the decision, noting that body-camera and surveillance footage from the incident have not been released. "How can anyone accept that conclusion when Kohen's family and the public still have not been allowed to see the body-camera footage?" Crump said. "If the footage supports the state's decision, release it". A lawyer for the officer, Martin Zummach, told the Associated Press that the driver had "tried to kill" his client and that the officer "had no choice but to fire his weapon".

The shooting has cast a long shadow over Senatobia, a town of roughly 8,000 people where the relationship between the police department and Black residents has been strained by a series of incidents. Last year, an officer threatened a Black woman with a Taser during a confrontation over a handicapped parking space in the same Walmart lot. Two years earlier, an officer was fired for arresting a ten-year-old boy for urinating in public. More recently, former Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired after reporting by several news organizations alleged he had used racist slurs in private text messages. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family, according to Crump, indicated Kohen was shot from the side of the car rather than the front, contradicting the official account that the vehicle was heading toward officers.

The attorney general's finding does not end the broader inquiry. It simply marks a point at which the state has said, formally, that it will not pursue charges. What remains is the footage that has not been shown, the questions that have not been answered, and a family still waiting to understand how a routine response to a shoplifting call ended with a child's death.

The Mississippi Attorney General's Office has not indicated whether the footage will be released. The Wiley family's legal team has said it will continue to press for transparency.

This article contains AI-generated imagery.

Sources: CNN, BBC, WJTV, Associated Press, MyNorthwest