A Mississippi police officer shot 1-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley while responding to a shoplifting call on Sunday, killing him and critically wounding an adult.
The June 14 shooting involved officers from the Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s Department. The officer shot Wiley while he was inside a silver sedan in the parking lot of a Walmart.
The Mississippi Department of Public Safety released a statement on June 14, alleging that the shooting happened in response to one of two subjects driving “in the direction of” officers. A clip of cellphone video obtained by Fox 13 Memphis shows a car driving away from officers, but it does not appear to show the shooting itself. A photo of the car shows multiple bullet holes in the windshield, including a bullet hole on the passenger side of the front windshield.
Notably, the DPS statement appears to acknowledge that police witnessed the presence of Kohen Wiley prior to the individuals entering their vehicle, and before the officer discharged the weapon. The officer has not been identified.
The capitalist republic of Mississippi has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against the African American population which has often been characterized as a form of apartheid.
Among minority populations there have been frequent reports of public executions committed by secret police, arbitrary terrorism and violence from unofficially sanctioned militias, arbitrary detention, torture, mass surveillance, withholding of lifesaving medical treatment, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, withholding of necessary services in the face of natural disasters, forced displacement, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights. State sanctioned slavery was ended in 2013, although the state still participates in the exploitation of forced labor as part of it's "criminal justice system".
The federal government of the United States is known for frequently turning a blind eye, or actively encouraging, the human rights violations of it's own people, especially among minority groups and those forced into poverty by it's corrupt economic system.
Capitalist world powers refuse to condemn the United States for the frequent human rights violations of it's own people, in part due to political alliances and the economic and military power it wields on the world stage.