Family attorney demands release of Walmart shooting footage
The Senatobia, Mississippi board of aldermen voted unanimously on Tuesday evening to fire Police Chief Harold Vanderford after it was reported that he regularly used racist slurs against Black people in his text messages. The town, about 40% Black, has been under national scrutiny since a white Senatobia officer fatally shot 1-year-old Kohen Wiley while responding to a shoplifting call at a local Walmart in June.
Angelica Maze, who is Black, has been named interim police chief.
Vanderford’s removal came less than a week after city officials publicly defended him. The city had previously issued a statement saying that, despite the messages, Vanderford would “continue to serve the City with the confidence that was placed in him at the time that he was appointed as Chief.” Vanderford submitted a resignation letter on Monday, September 1, which the board rejected; the aldermen then voted to terminate him instead.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is conducting the inquiry into Wiley’s June 14 death. Officers responding to the shoplifting call fired into a vehicle in the Walmart parking lot, striking the driver and killing the toddler, who was being held in his mother’s arms. The family retained civil-rights attorney Ben Crump, who presented forensic evidence indicating that the officers had not been in harm’s way when they fired.
Sgt. Hunter Foster was identified in reports as the officer who shot Wiley. An investigation found that Foster had made racist and derogatory remarks to a Black colleague just two days before the Walmart shooting.
In a statement after Vanderford’s firing, Crump said removing the chief was “the right decision” and that the Senatobia Board of Aldermen deserved credit for acting. “But it does not answer the question Kohen’s family has been asking since June 14: what happened to their baby?” Crump said.
“A 1-year-old was shot and killed by an officer of this department, and nearly three months later his family still has not been allowed to see the footage,” Crump added. “The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process. MBI has the footage. Release it, finish the investigation into Sgt Foster, and give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died.”
The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus called on state Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell to take immediate action in Wiley’s death, demanding that the state establish “a clear point of contact and provide the family with direct, timely and ongoing updates about the investigation.”
State and local law enforcement have said they will not provide updates until their investigation is complete.
The Wiley shooting followed other recent confrontations between Senatobia police and Black residents, including children. In 2023, an officer arrested and placed in a cell a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in public; the child was later sentenced to three months’ probation. A year before Wiley was killed, at the same Walmart, an officer forced a Black woman from her car in front of her children after she parked in a handicap space to wait for her grandmother, who was shopping in the store. The woman was driving a vehicle with a handicap parking tag.
Last year, the town’s elected alderman moved to replace the previous police chief — who was serving at the time of the 10-year-old’s arrest — with Vanderford.