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After months of investigation, state officials in Mississippi have found that a police shooting that left a toddler dead was a justified use of force. Elise Catrion Gregg of the Gulf States Newsroom and Mississippi Public Broadcasting reports.
ELISE CATRION GREGG, BYLINE: Police were responding to a call about the shoplifting of baby clothes and diapers at a Walmart in north Mississippi in June when they shot into a car, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. Now the AG's office says it won't prosecute the officer who fired the fatal shot. Officers began pursuing two adults in the parking lot, with 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in the car. Police claim one of the adults began driving towards officers, and that's when one officer fired at the car, hitting Wiley. Wiley's mother, who was a passenger, denies that the driver headed toward police. Marquell Bridges, a community activist, has helped organize several rallies following Wiley's death. He calls the attorney general's office's findings a denial of justice.
MARQUELL BRIDGES: Imagine waiting three months for any type of answers, and then imagine the attorney general telling you that it's justified - your child deserved to die over a pack of Pampers.
GREGG: He says the family and community are still pushing for transparency, even with the attorney general's findings released.
BRIDGES: Not only did we have to wait three months for this horrible denial of justice to occur, you still haven't released any video or shown the family or the public anything.
GREGG: The attorney general's three-sentence statement offered little insight into how the review was done or what factors made the shooting a justified use of force. The family's attorney, Van Turner, says they're still looking for other avenues of legal recourse.
VAN TURNER: We're not going to leave any stone unturned. And since the county would not do it, the state will not do it, we're going to seek the federal government's intervention to see if they'll be able to do something, along with the civil action.
GREGG: The Mississippi attorney general's office says its investigation is now closed, but the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says it's still looking into the shooting. Meanwhile, Mississippi's Legislative Black Caucus has condemned the AG's report, demanding the release of video footage and an independent review. For NPR News, I'm Elise Catrion Gregg in Jackson, Mississippi.
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