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 — A Mississippi police officer involved in last month’s fatal shooting of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley at a Walmart was previously accused of exaggerating the risks that a vehicle posed to officers during another parking lot confrontation that escalated into violence in 2019, records show.

That incident took place at a Waffle House parking lot when Officer Hunter Foster worked for the police department in Southaven. It led to a federal lawsuit against Foster and a dozen other officers, which was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2022.

According to the lawsuit, Foster falsified his report that stemmed from a call for a suspicious vehicle, claiming that the driver had accelerated his car, “almost running over” another officer. Surveillance footage filed with the lawsuit shows no evidence that the car drove toward, or nearly hit, any of the officers. It shows several officers, though not Foster, aggressively pulling men from the car and striking them while they were on the ground. 

Now employed by the police department in Senatobia, Foster was among the officers who responded to a shoplifting call at the local Walmart on June 14. At least one officer opened fire on a vehicle, striking Kohen and killing him. 

Officers had attempted to stop the car, but “the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” according to a statement released the day of the shooting by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, part of the state Department of Public Safety.

The Senatobia Board of Aldermen placed Foster on leave two days after the shooting, though no one involved has said if Foster fired his weapon. Action News 5 in Memphis reported that MBI had listed Foster as a subject of its investigation into the shooting, based on records that the bureau said it released to the station by mistake. Authorities have not identified the other officers who were present.

The shooting has led to a firestorm of criticism, with some community activists calling for Foster to be fired or prosecuted. Foster, 32, is in his eighth year in law enforcement and has said nothing publicly. He didn’t respond to a handwritten message  a reporter left at his home Thursday.

Reached by phone, Foster’s father, Rick, who is a retired law enforcement officer, declined to discuss his son’s actions. “That will all come out once the investigation is complete,” he said.

Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, was holding Kohen in her arms in the front passenger seat. Wiley’s friend, who was driving the vehicle, had been accused of stealing baby clothes and a pack of diapers.

Mississippi’s public safety commissioner, Sean Tindell, told Senatobia aldermen that MBI had obtained body-worn camera footage, but the agency has denied repeated requests to release footage of the incident.

Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing the Wiley family, hired a forensic pathologist who concluded that Kohen was struck by a bullet from at least an intermediate distance from the side, which Crump said was evidence that officers weren’t in harm’s way when they opened fire.

Crump shared a photo showing the vehicle’s front passenger window was blown out. The photo also appears to show a bullet hole in the windshield on the passenger side.

Foster left his Southaven job a month before the federal lawsuit stemming from the Waffle House arrests was filed in the Northern District of Mississippi. Southaven Police Chief Seth Kern declined to say if Foster’s departure was related to the incident.

Foster went on to a three-year stint with the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, where he was decorated for carrying out the highest number of DUI arrests during his first two years.

Foster carried out 297 such arrests in 2022 and 230 in 2023, the most by any law enforcement officer in Mississippi in those years, according to Sobriety Trained Officers Representing Mississippi, a group that tracks DUIs.

During that time, he was accused in a second lawsuit of using excessive force during a traffic stop.

A woman said Foster and three other deputies pulled her over in August 2022 and beat her,  knocking out multiple teeth and breaking her jaw in three places, according to the suit. In court papers, a lawyer for Foster denied the allegations of excessive force. A judge dismissed the case in March.

Foster’s use-of-force reports from his time at the DeSoto County department do not include the incident, and the judge who dismissed the suit noted that the plaintiff’s only allegation against Foster specifically was that he was too rough when he handcuffed her. 

Foster left the DeSoto sheriff’s office in October 2024 and joined the Senatobia Police Department in March 2025, state records show. DeSoto County Sheriff Thomas Tuggle referred questions about Foster to Tish Clark, a department spokesperson. Clark didn’t respond to emailed questions.

Lt. Shane Howell, a Senatobia police spokesperson, declined to say if the department was aware of Foster’s role in the two federal lawsuits at the time of his hiring. Foster was promoted to sergeant six months after his hiring, city records show.

In Southaven, the incident that was the subject of the 2021 lawsuit began when the two plaintiffs were searching for lost keys, the suit alleges, in the parking lot of a Waffle House. Video footage from before officers arrived shows two men using their car headlights and the flashlight from a phone as they pace the mostly empty lot.

Abruptly, five patrol cars swerve into the lot, with two police SUVs ramming into the plaintiffs’ vehicle. At one point after officers exit their vehicles and stand around the car, the men appear to try to pull forward a few feet. The video does not show an officer in front of the car at that moment.

During the encounter, one of the officers can be seen banging on the hood of the car, pointing his gun at the windshield, smashing the front passenger window with his baton and repeatedly beating one of the men after he exited the driver side and lay on the ground. 

The men were arrested and charged with multiple offenses, including aggravated assault on police, resisting arrest and fleeing law enforcement. 

Foster, the lawsuit alleged, was one of several officers who submitted false and near-identical narratives of the incident, claiming that the driver nearly ran over an officer and that both plaintiffs had resisted arrest.

Katherine Kerby, a lawyer for the officers, wrote in her response to the lawsuit that Foster “denies the allegations as to him or that he had any knowledge that any aspects of his report were not accurate.”

Court records show the lawsuit was settled following a confidential agreement. The city of Southaven has not responded to a request for the amount it paid to settle. 

Joseph Cranney reported from New Orleans.