Arrest made as Senatobia police fire is investigated as arson

Autopsy finding differed from investigators’ account of the fatal June shooting

ATF New Orleans officers are investigating a fire that broke out at the Senatobia Police Department in the early hours of 31 October 2026 in Senatobia, Mississippi, according to The Guardian. The cause had not been reported, and agents with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were investigating the blaze as arson.

An arrest tied to the fire was made on Monday, but no details about the person of interest were released. The Senatobia Police Department did not respond to a request for comment. The ongoing investigation is being handled by the US attorney general’s office of the Northern District of Mississippi.

The fire occurred at a department embroiled in controversy after the June shooting of Kohen Wiley. In June, then-Senatobia police sergeant Hunter Foster shot and killed Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old Black boy, as the child sat in his mother’s arms in a Walmart parking lot. Foster was responding to a report of alleged shoplifting. Foster is white; Kohen, his mother and the driver of the vehicle are Black.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the shooting, alleged that the driver traveled toward the officers and almost struck one. Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the Wiley family, released an independent autopsy that indicated Kohen was shot from the side of the car rather than the front.

In mid-October, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced in a statement that the shooting was “justified.” Foster resigned from the police force shortly after Fitch’s statement.

“After what I’ve seen today, I’m having a difficult time understanding the word ‘justified’,” LaSandra Williams, Kohen’s paternal grandmother, said during a press conference Crump held about video footage of the shooting. “I don’t understand how it’s OK for someone to take a sweet, innocent soul – Lord knows I miss him so much.”

The shooting was the most recent in a series of incidents involving Senatobia’s police force. In the month before Fitch’s statement, Senatobia, a city that is about 40% Black, fired its police chief, who allegedly used racial slurs.

A year before Kohen was killed, an officer at the same Walmart forced a Black woman out of her car and pointed a stun gun at her in front of her children after she parked in a handicap space while waiting for her grandmother, who was shopping inside. The woman was driving a vehicle with a handicap parking tag.

In 2023, another 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.

Shortly after the shooting, activists and community members led protests, including a protest outside the police department, seeking answers.

Kohen would have turned two last weekend. The Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, an activist group, organized a giveaway at the city’s community center to celebrate what would have been the toddler’s birthday. Families who attended received diapers, wipes, food and other items.

As of 3 November, investigators had not reported the cause of the fire or released details about the person of interest. The inquiry remained ongoing, with ATF agents examining the blaze as arson and the US attorney general’s office of the Northern District of Mississippi handling the investigation.