By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) – A police officer in Mississippi who fatally shot a 1-year-old Black child in a Walmart parking lot in June and the interim police chief in the city where the shooting took place have resigned, local officials said on Friday.
Hunter Foster, the officer who shot the child, resigned from the Senatobia Police Department, Mayor Greg Graves said on Friday, without specifying whether he was asked to resign or did so on his own. Angelica Maze, who was the interim chief for the department, also stepped down, according to a resignation letter reported by local media.
Foster had fired his gun at a moving vehicle in response to a shoplifting call in Senatobia in June, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. The fatal shooting of the child had sparked calls from civil rights advocates for accountability.
The child’s family has said the shooting was not justified, but Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said this week that “the use of force was justified” and cleared the officer of criminal wrongdoing.
Although Foster was cleared, his lawyer, Martin Zummach, told NBC News that his client “resigned for the good of the city and the police department and to permit the process of healing.”
Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the child’s family, said they were calling for a Department of Justice investigation and that accountability cannot end at the resignation of the officer.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said after the shooting in mid-June that law enforcement officers responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart and encountered two adults and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle.
Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in their direction, the bureau added, saying that an officer “then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene.”
Footage released from the incident showed Foster running out of the Walmart with other officers after an employee said suspected shoplifters were attempting to flee. While officials have alleged the child’s mother and her friend stole diapers, the two women have not been charged.
“No mother should have to bury her baby over an allegation of shoplifting diapers,” Crump said on Friday.
Former Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired in September after media outlets reported he used racist slurs against Black people in text messages.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Tom Hogue)
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