The family of a 1-year-old boy who was shot to death by police in Mississippi last month is demanding accountability after an independent autopsy they commissioned suggested law enforcement misrepresented the circumstances that led to the killing.

Police shot the baby, Kohen Wiley, on June 14 in a Walmart parking lot in Senatobia, a city of about 8,000 people in the northern part of the state, about 40 miles south of Memphis.

Police said officers at the scene responded to a report of shoplifting shortly after 2 p.m. local time. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which took charge of the probe, said in a statement that officers encountered two adults — who have since been identified as the boy’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and a female friend — and a “juvenile child,” whom they described as “fleeing from the store into a vehicle.” The bureau alleged the driver — the unidentified family friend — moved the vehicle “in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” before the officer fired their weapon.

But an independent autopsy released Wednesday by the family’s legal team, spearheaded by civil rights Attorney Ben Crump, called that narrative into question. The autopsy, conducted by forensic psychologist Roger Mitchell and obtained by MS NOW, found that the baby was shot through the side of his body, complicating authorities’ claim that the car was driving toward police.

Crump and the family’s supporters cast the killing as the latest example of the tragic consequences of racist overpolicing — Kohen Wiley and his mother are Black— and demanded the authorities and Walmart release body camera and surveillance footage of the incident.

“They want us to believe that it was a life-or-death situation because that’s the only way you can justify shooting into a vehicle that you know there’s a baby in that car,” Crump said at the Wednesday news conference.

A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees MBI, told MS NOW the investigation is continuing and declined to respond to questions Thursday. A spokesperson for the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office told MS NOW the office “does not comment on active investigations.” The person did not say whether the AG’s office was investigating the killing.

Kohen Wiley was pronounced dead at a hospital, where the driver went after the shooting, Vellesiya Wiley said in a video posted to Crump’s X account. She said the officers fired three to four shots — even after she held Kohen up to show them there was a baby in the car — and that one hit her son’s ribcage as she held him in the passenger seat.

“I watched my baby take his first breath,” she said at a news conference last month, “and I watched my baby take his last breath.”

The autopsy report said the gunshot entered through the toddler’s chest on the right side and exited through the left. At the Wednesday news conference, the family’s legal team displayed a photo of the passenger-side window of the vehicle almost entirely blown out. A single bullet hole also appeared to be visible on the left side of the windshield, near the passenger seat.

Crump also took issue with authorities’ description of the infant as a “juvenile.”

“You do not call a baby a juvenile unless you already are building the case to justify what you did to that baby,” he said Wednesday.

Vellesiya Wiley’s friend, whom Crump’s office said was accused of shoplifting diapers, was also struck by gunshots. She has been in and out of the hospital managing her injuries, Van Turner, one of the lawyers on the case, told MS NOW.

No law enforcement officers suffered “serious physical injury” in the incident, MBI said.

A June 16 statement from the city called the shooting “a heartbreaking tragedy” and later said the officer involved had been placed on administrative leave. The Senatobia police chief did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The city’s mayor, Greg Graves, acknowledged the community’s “tremendous pain” in a video statement a few days after the killing.

Local community members and the families of the victims have urged consumers to boycott Walmart. At a protest at the store last month, officers deployed tear gas to try to force the crowd to disperse, according to a local news report.

In a statement provided to MS NOW, a Walmart spokesperson said the company was “heartbroken” by the shooting, adding, “The safety of our associates and customers is our top priority.” The spokesperson said the company is working with MBI and deferred additional questions to the agency.

The organization Advocates for Youth condemned the killing, saying in a statement: “For too long, Black and Brown families and communities across the United States have lived in fear of violence at the hands of police. That a child in his mother’s arms should be killed by agents of the government is unbearable and unconscionable.”

Turner, the lawyer, said the legal team wants Congress to pass the George Floyd Act — a policing reform bill first introduced in 2021 — and the state to pass a similar law to prevent the likelihood of a similar tragedy in the future.

Kohen Wiley’s burial was held last weekend at a ceremony where he was remembered as “goofy,” a fan of the cartoon character Bluey and a beloved baby with a family excited for his future, NBC News reported.

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From MS Now.