*Vellesiya Wiley says the public has the story backward, and she appears in a video shared by attorney Ben Crump to set the record straight after police killed her one-year-old son Kohen outside a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi.
Wiley says the public has the biggest misconception about who police were actually after. “I kept walking because it had nothing to do with me,” she said, explaining that officers had stopped her friend, not her, over a shoplifting accusation involving diapers. Confusion spread among bystanders gathered outside the hospital after the shooting, and rumors wrongly attached Wiley’s name to the accusation. “[The police] weren’t talking about me, they was talking about the driver,” she clarified, per SandraRose.com.
Wiley also disputes how the shooting unfolded. Officers have suggested the driver endangered them by aiming the car in their direction, justifying the gunfire. Wiley disputes this, saying the driver steered away from officers, not toward them. She believes the gunfire was not a defensive reaction but an intentional act.
The sequence leading up to the shooting, as Wiley described it, began when she had already moved away from the store entrance while officers engaged her friend. She then entered a vehicle with her son, driven by that same friend. As police drew their weapons, Wiley lifted her son so officers could see that a child was in the car. Moments later, the driver reversed into another vehicle, and gunshots followed.
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“One of the shots hit [Kohen] in his rib cage and the other shots hit [the driver] in her arm and her thigh,” Wiley explained in the video.
The encounter left her son critically injured, and doctors later pronounced him dead at a hospital. The driver also suffered injuries but survived.
Wiley is currently not facing any charges. Officials have not publicly identified the officer involved, but the department placed the officer on administrative leave.
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: 1-Year-Old Dead After Mississippi Police Shoot into Vehicle Outside Walmart
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