U.S. News / Mississippi — The Kohen Wiley shooting officer resigns development came on Friday, October 23, 2026: Senatobia police officer Hunter Foster, who fired into a moving car in a Walmart parking lot on June 14 and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, has resigned from the department, and interim chief Angelica Maze has also stepped down from the chief role. The resignations were confirmed days after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch ruled the use of force justified and declined prosecution, and a day after the state released body-camera and surveillance video of the shooting. Kohen’s family, represented by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, says a resignation is not accountability and is calling for a federal investigation.
SENATOBIA, Mississippi — A police officer in Mississippi who fatally shot a 1-year-old child in a Walmart parking lot in June and the interim police chief of the city where the shooting took place have both resigned, local officials said on Friday. Hunter Foster, the Senatobia Police Department officer who shot the child, resigned, Mayor Greg Graves told reporters, without specifying whether Foster was asked to resign or did so on his own, according to Reuters. Angelica Maze, who had been serving as interim chief, also stepped down, according to a resignation letter reported by local media; City Clerk Katie Harbin told CNN that Maze is staying with the department in a different capacity, and that Foster had turned in a resignation letter. The Commercial Appeal reported that the board of aldermen accepted Foster’s resignation on October 21 and that it took effect immediately, with the mayor confirming the departure publicly on Friday.
The timing is the story as much as the resignations themselves. On Monday, October 19, Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced that her office had completed its review of the June 14 incident, found the use of force justified, and would not present the case to a grand jury. On Thursday, October 22, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety released body-camera and surveillance footage, along with a heavily redacted Mississippi Bureau of Investigation incident report. On Friday, the officer at the center of the case was gone from the force anyway. Foster’s lawyer, Martin Zummach, told NBC News, in comments reported by Reuters, that his client “resigned for the good of the city and the police department and to permit the process of healing.” Zummach separately told CNN the driver “was attempting to kill those 5 officers, and Hunter Foster had no choice but to discharge his weapon,” adding: “We are very sad for the loss of life.”
What happened in the Walmart parking lot on June 14
The underlying incident unfolded on Sunday, June 14, 2026, at a Walmart in Senatobia, a Tate County city roughly 40 miles (65 kilometres) south of Memphis. According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s account after the shooting, officers responded to a shoplifting call and encountered two adults and a child fleeing the store into a vehicle. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, the driver drove in their direction, and an officer discharged his weapon as the vehicle fled the scene. In the fuller version assembled from the footage and reports released this week, Senatobia officers and Tate County deputies were already at the store for an unrelated reason — the redacted MBI report says they were reviewing surveillance video concerning an unknown man accused of sexually harassing customers — when Walmart asset-protection staff said people accused of “fraudulent transactions” were leaving the store, according to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger’s read of the report and video.
Less than a minute passed between officers being told two people were running and the first shot, the Clarion Ledger reported. Surveillance video shows one woman holding a baby and another holding a rectangular box walking toward the exit, then running. Body-camera footage shows officers rushing to the parking lot, pointing guns at a gray Ford Fusion and shouting “Stop the car.” The driver reversed out of the parking space and hit a car parked behind her, then drove forward. Foster, standing toward the front passenger side of the vehicle, fired into the car — at least three times, by the Clarion Ledger’s count of the footage, including a shot through the passenger-side window as he stepped out of the car’s path. The car made minor contact with another officer, no law-enforcement injuries were reported, and the vehicle drove off. It arrived at Highland Hills Medical Center in Senatobia, where Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead. Another passenger was critically injured and airlifted to Regional One Health; a third passenger was not apparently injured. Foster later told another law-enforcement official, on body-camera audio, that he could not see a baby in the car, CNN reported.
Police suspected Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and her friend of stealing diapers and baby clothes, the Associated Press reported. The mother has denied that she or her friend stole anything, disputed that her friend drove toward the officers, and neither woman has been charged with shoplifting or other counts, according to court records cited by AP. Foster was placed on administrative leave shortly after the shooting, the city announced on June 16.
Two incompatible accounts of the same seconds
Almost every material fact about the final seconds is disputed, and the dispute is now preserved on video that different viewers read differently. The state’s position, stated by Fitch’s office on October 19, is: “After a thorough investigation into this matter, there is insufficient evidence of any criminal conduct to present this case to a grand jury. We are declining prosecution of this matter and will close the case accordingly.” The MBI report says the driver “placed the vehicle in drive and sped toward the officers” before the officer fired. Foster’s attorney says the driver was attempting to kill five officers and Foster had no choice.
The family’s position is the opposite. Crump said at an October 22 news conference that the video corroborates the family’s independent autopsy finding that Kohen was shot from the side, right to left, and that a shot from the side of a moving vehicle was not justified. Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, said the video shows the officer was not in danger of being hit when he fired: “The word ‘justified’ has haunted me. You killed my grandbaby and there’s no justice for that.” Crump put the moral frame his team has used all week in one line on Friday: “No mother should have to bury her baby over an allegation of shoplifting diapers.” In a separate statement the same day, he said: “A badge cannot simply be turned in to escape responsibility for taking the life of an innocent 1-year-old baby. Kohen Wiley is never coming home to his mother, and no resignation can undo the devastating consequences of that officer’s actions.” The family and its attorneys say they will ask the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI for a federal review. Neither account should be treated by readers as settled beyond what the footage and documents show: a fast-moving encounter, a car that reversed into another vehicle and then moved forward past officers, shots fired from the front-passenger side, and a 1-year-old dead. Kohen would have turned 2 on November 1, Crump said.
Why this matters
This case matters because it sits at the intersection of three questions American policing keeps failing to answer cleanly. The first is tactical: when, if ever, should an officer fire into a moving vehicle, especially one whose occupants are suspected only of a low-level property offence? Many large departments restrict shooting at moving vehicles precisely because a shot through a side window cannot reliably stop a car, can kill a passenger who committed no offence, and turns a fleeing-suspect problem into a fatal one — a reasoning the family’s lawyers are now pressing in public. The second question is procedural: the state investigated, cleared, and released video in a single week, and the officer resigned in the same news cycle. Supporters of the process can fairly say the system worked as designed — an independent state investigation, a prosecutorial decision with reasons stated, public release of footage, and a departure that may help a small department move on. Critics can fairly answer that each step arrived only after public pressure, that the family learned of the no-charge decision at the same time as the public, and that a resignation with no decertification fight leaves open whether Foster could work in law enforcement elsewhere. The third question is local trust. Senatobia has now lost, in about five weeks, a police chief fired in September after reports that he used racist slurs against Black people in private text messages, an interim chief who has stepped down from the role, and the officer in the most damaging shooting in the town’s recent history. A department does not rebuild credibility with one resignation letter; it rebuilds it, if at all, with who leads it next and what rules visibly change.
Context: a small department under a second, separate cloud
The resignations cannot be separated from the department’s other crisis. Former chief Harold Vanderford was fired last month following reports alleging he used racist slurs in private texts, AP reported. Maze, his interim replacement, has now left the chief’s office while remaining with the department in another capacity, according to the city clerk. That means the two stories — a child killed during a shoplifting response, and a chief removed over reported racist language — will be read together by Senatobia residents whatever officials intend, and together they define the starting point for any successor. Mississippi readers will also place this case alongside the state’s long argument over accountability and second chances in its justice system, the theme Signal Post News explored in its coverage of Curtis Flowers, who died this month after six trials in Mississippi, and its reporting on other Mississippi communities dealing with sudden loss at the Brookdale Clinton senior-living fire. The Kohen Wiley case is different in kind — a police shooting, not a prosecution or a fire — but the underlying civic question is the same: whether institutions explain themselves quickly and completely enough for the public to believe the explanation.
What happens next
Three tracks now run in parallel. First, the federal track: Crump and co-counsel Van Turner say they will petition the Department of Justice for an investigation. A federal civil-rights review is a high bar and a slow one, and no federal agency had announced any action as of Friday’s reporting. Second, the civil track: the family has an independent autopsy, newly public video, and attorneys who litigate police-shooting cases nationally; no lawsuit had been reported filed as of Friday, and Crump has not publicly confirmed whether the family plans to sue over the resignation itself, the Commercial Appeal noted in an earlier report. Third, the local track: Senatobia must name a new chief, decide what if anything changes in its vehicle-pursuit and use-of-force practices, and govern a department whose former chief, interim chief, and the officer in this case have all exited their roles within weeks of one another. Watch for whether Foster’s law-enforcement certification is challenged — the family’s team has called for decertification in related reporting — because a resignation without a certification action is the difference between leaving one job and leaving the profession. Watch, too, for whether the women accused in the original shoplifting allegation are ever charged; as of this week’s reporting, they have not been, over an allegation involving diapers and baby clothes that set a fatal chain of events in motion.
For now, the confirmed facts are narrow and should stay narrow. A 1-year-old is dead. The state has said the shooting was justified and closed its criminal review. The video is public, and the two sides read it in opposite ways. And the officer who fired, and the interim chief who led the department while the decision landed, have both resigned their roles in the same week the footage came out. Whether that is the end of accountability or the beginning of it is exactly the argument Senatobia, and the Wiley family, are about to have in public.
Sources: Reuters, October 23-24, 2026; CNN, October 23, 2026; Mississippi Clarion Ledger, October 23, 2026; Associated Press reporting as carried by CNN and the Clarion Ledger; Mississippi Department of Public Safety and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation statements and released footage as reported above.