Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com. Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about the center’s work here.

SENATOBIA — The 1-year-old boy shot by police outside a Mississippi Walmart was killed by a bullet that entered through the vehicle’s front passenger door window – not the windshield, a lawyer for the victim’s family said at a news conference Wednesday.

Ben Crump, the high-profile civil rights lawyer, said those were the conclusions of Dr. Robert Mitchell, a forensic pathologist who examined Kohen Wiley’s wounds on behalf of the family. Kohen was with his mother and her friend when he was shot, during a confrontation over alleged shoplifting by one of the women.

Senatobia Police officers had responded to a shoplifting call, “which led to officers discharging their firearms,” the department said in a brief statement. The Tate County Sheriff’s Office, which was also on the scene, said that an unnamed officer fired at an “oncoming vehicle.”

Video of the June 14 shooting has not been released, but Crump shared a photo showing the front passenger door window blown out from the sedan. Crump said that was evidence that police fired even though officers were not in the path of the vehicle.

Phone footage captured by a witness, Desirae Smith, shows three law enforcement officers present as the car drives away, with the passenger door window already shattered.

“You can’t get that shot from the front. Why would you shoot into a vehicle from the side when you’re clearly not in harm’s way?” Crump said Wednesday, flanked by Kohen’s grandparents and a crowd of supporters who chanted, “Baby Kohen’s life mattered!” The group gathered at the Senatobia Church of Christ, a mile away from the Walmart on U.S. Highway 51.

Kohen, who was in his mother’s arms in the passenger seat of the car, was struck at least once in his right torso and had an exit wound along his left side, Crump said during the news conference, pointing at a photograph of the autopsy. The pattern of abrasions wasn’t consistent with a shot from point blank range, meaning the shots were likely fired from at least an intermediate distance, he said.

The news conference followed two weeks of unrest in the small town about 40 miles south of Memphis. Protestors have demanded police release footage of the incident from officers’ body cameras, with one activist Wednesday calling the shooting “our generation’s Emmett Till moment.” 

Senatobia police also haven’t shown that footage to Kohen’s family, claiming the investigation would take as long as nine months, Crump said Wednesday. 

Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, addressed the public three days after the shooting and indicated evidence would be presented to the public when the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, a division of his department, concludes its probe.

The Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s Office have not responded to requests by Mississippi Today for video footage, including any captured by body-worn police cameras. Neither has the state Department of Public Safety.

WMC-TV Action News 5 first reported that Sgt. Hunter Foster was one of the Senatobia officers present during the shooting, citing records obtained through a public records request. It’s unclear if he was the officer who fired his weapon.

A statement posted on Facebook by the Tate County Sheriff’s Office said its deputies were at the Walmart on an unrelated call when their assistance was requested, though it does not specify who made the request. “The suspects fled the parking lot in their vehicle after an officer fired at the oncoming vehicle,” the statement says. 

Kohen’s mother said she was holding him in the front seat next to her adult friend, who someone had accused of stealing diapers from the Walmart. The friend was also shot, but her name has not been released by Kohen’s family or law enforcement officials.

“We’re not talking about no strong arm robbery, we ain’t talking about nobody being shot, we ain’t talking about no hostage situation,” Crump said. “We’re talking about a box of diapers. This baby is dead, and it was an alleged shoplifting of a box of diapers.”

Vellesiya Wiley, the boy’s 19-year-old mother, said she had lifted her son up to show officers a baby was in the car. By the time she sat him down, officers had fired three or four shots, one of which hit the baby in his rib cage, Wiley said in a video Crump posted to his X account.

Senatobia’s Board of Aldermen placed an unnamed officer on administrative leave after the shooting, Mississippi Today previously reported. A representative of the Senatobia Police Department wouldn’t address Foster’s status with the department Wednesday, saying the matter was under investigation. The public safety department also declined to provide any disciplinary records for Foster that might exist, saying they were exempt from public record disclosure requirements. 

Neither the police nor the sheriff’s office have not announced any charges against Wiley.

Joseph Cranney contributed to this report from New Orleans.