This week, police in Mississippi shot into a car, trying to stop a fleeing suspect. In the process, they killed a 1-year-old boy and put his aunt in the hospital.
The scenario is tragic, but it’s especially galling because in this case, what brought officers to the scene in the first place was a report of stolen diapers.
On Sunday, police responded to a call about a possible shoplifter at a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi. “Officers said they encountered two adults and a small child running from the building and getting into a vehicle,” reports Fox13. Cellphone footage from the scene shows officers running after the suspects on foot as they drove away.
“Authorities said officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of officers and nearly struck one of them,” adds WREG, citing the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI). “An officer then fired their weapon, according to MBI, and the vehicle fled the scene.”
The car went to a local hospital, where 1-year-old Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead. According to Wiley’s family, the other occupants of the car were his mother and his aunt, who was admitted in critical condition.
A witness later claimed he saw two women leaving the store, one holding the child and the other holding a box of diapers. It’s not yet clear if they were actually shoplifting, but that’s beside the point; even if they were, pilfering diapers hardly merits an armed response.
In Mississippi, shoplifting is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine or a few months in jail—certainly nothing that justifies deadly force. Investigators claim the suspects drove their car at one of the officers, but so far, there is no evidence to either confirm or contradict that claim. Cellphone footage shows them driving away, but it does not show either the car swerving toward an officer or the shooting itself.
It’s certainly plausible that investigators may be exaggerating, or even lying about, the threat the officer faced. In January 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Minneapolis motorist Reneé Good. Kristi Noem, then the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Good had “weaponized her vehicle” by trying to hit him with her car, though footage at the scene indicated Good was actually trying to drive around Ross, who had positioned himself in front of her vehicle even as agents directed her to drive away.
It’s also not clear why the officers in Mississippi felt the need to give chase in the way they did. According to the MBI, officers saw the suspects leave the store and get into their car but chose to pursue on foot. Investigators also admit that officers saw there was a child in the car, yet they still chose not only to give chase but to deploy weapons.
There are no national standards for foot pursuits, and few police departments even have set rules. A 2015 survey asked “several hundred law enforcement agencies in the United States” if they had a written policy on foot pursuits, and “the vast majority (86% or 414) indicated they did not.”
Of the departments that do have written policies, the Mississippi officers’ actions would not pass muster.
In its foot pursuit policy, the Madison Police Department in Madison, Wisconsin, cautions officers to “evaluate the risk involved to themselves, other officers, the subject, and the community to balance that risk with the need to pursue and immediately apprehend the subject.” Potential factors include “whether the subject is armed or dangerous,” “risk to officers and/or the community posed by the subject,” and “ability to apprehend the subject at a later date.”
By each of those metrics, an officer should not pursue. There was no indication that the suspects were armed or that they posed a risk to the community, and any officers close enough to see the license plate could run the numbers and identify the driver.
The Stanford Center for Racial Justice at Stanford Law School agrees, writing in a “model use of force policy” that for an officer to “initiate a foot pursuit,” he must have not just reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed, but he must determine that “the benefit of immediately apprehending the person outweighs the risks to public and officer safety.”
Besides, it’s simply counterintuitive to pursue a car on foot. And petty shoplifting hardly seems to justify mounting a chase, whether on foot or by car.
Unfortunately, police all too often find themselves using violence while pursuing a suspected shoplifter.
In February 2023, police assigned to a mall in Tysons Corner, Virginia, responded to a report of a man shoplifting sunglasses from Nordstrom. When he ran, officers chased him into the woods, where they drew their weapons and fired, killing him.
In 2024, a jury convicted one of the officers of recklessly handling a firearm, while acquitting him of manslaughter. A judge sentenced him to serve three years in prison out of a five-year sentence, but in January, outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin granted the officer an “absolute pardon.”
In October 2025, a security guard in Albuquerque shot and killed a man trying to shoplift less than $100 worth of merchandise from a Spirit Halloween.
The death of Kohen Wiley is an unthinkable tragedy. But what’s even worse is that it came as the result of police officers showing no regard for his safety, treating suspicion of misdemeanor shoplifting as an offense that justified lethal force.
