—Barrington Williams, B1Daily

There is a phrase sitting at the center of the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley:

The vehicle almost struck an officer.

Now there is an uncomfortable reason that wording deserves especially close scrutiny.

Years before Foster became a Senatobia police sergeant and was identified in mistakenly released Mississippi Bureau of Investigation records as a subject of the investigation into Kohen’s death, Foster was accused in a federal civil-rights lawsuit of exaggerating the danger posed by another vehicle during a police encounter.

And in that earlier case, Foster’s report used strikingly familiar language.

He claimed a driver accelerated and “almost [ran] over” another officer.

Surveillance footage filed in the lawsuit, according to Mississippi Today’s examination of the evidence, showed no evidence that the vehicle drove toward or nearly struck an officer.

Now, seven years later, another vehicle encounter involving Foster has ended with a Black baby dead.

And once again, authorities say a car “almost” struck an officer.

That does not prove Foster lied in either incident. It does, however, make the unreleased video from Kohen’s killing extraordinarily important.

The Waffle House Encounter

The earlier incident occurred in 2019 while Foster worked for the Southaven Police Department.

According to the subsequent federal lawsuit, two men were searching for lost keys in a mostly empty Waffle House parking lot when police arrived after receiving a suspicious-vehicle call.

Surveillance footage described by Mississippi Today shows five patrol vehicles entering the parking lot, with two police SUVs striking the men’s vehicle.

At one point, the car moved forward several feet.

But Mississippi Today reported that the surveillance footage doesn’t show an officer standing in front of the vehicle at that moment.

Nevertheless, Foster’s police report described something considerably more threatening.

According to the lawsuit, Foster wrote that the driver accelerated and nearly ran over another officer.

The plaintiffs alleged that Foster and several other officers submitted false or nearly identical accounts describing the car as nearly striking an officer and claiming the men resisted arrest.

Video told a different-looking story.

The Camera Matters

The surveillance footage reportedly shows several officers surrounding the vehicle.

Mississippi Today reported that it does not show the car driving toward or nearly hitting any of the officers.

The video also reportedly shows officers other than Foster pulling the men from the vehicle and striking them while they were on the ground.

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

A federal civil-rights lawsuit followed.

Foster denied wrongdoing.

His attorney specifically denied allegations that Foster knew anything in his report was inaccurate. The case ultimately ended in a confidential settlement in 2022, meaning there was no trial verdict establishing that Foster falsified his report or otherwise committed wrongdoing.

That distinction is important.

The allegation was serious.

The video apparently contradicted an important part of the police narrative.

But a court never entered a finding that Foster lied.

Then Came Senatobia

Fast-forward to June 14, 2026.

Senatobia police responded to a reported shoplifting incident at Walmart involving Kohen Wiley’s mother and her friend.

Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, was sitting in the front passenger seat holding her 1-year-old son.

According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation’s initial account, officers attempted to stop their vehicle, but:

“The driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.”

An officer opened fire.

Kohen was struck and killed.

An adult in the vehicle was also wounded.

And Foster was there.

Senatobia officials subsequently confirmed Foster was placed on administrative leave two days after the shooting. Records MBI says it mistakenly released identified Foster as a subject of its investigation.

Authorities, however, have not publicly established that Foster was the officer who fired the fatal shot.

That uncertainty needs to remain crystal clear.

“Almost Striking One”

Here is where the similarities become impossible to ignore.

In the 2019 encounter, Foster allegedly reported that a vehicle accelerated and “almost” ran over an officer.

Mississippi Today says surveillance footage filed in the lawsuit showed no evidence supporting that description.

In the 2026 Kohen Wiley shooting, MBI’s initial statement says the vehicle drove toward officers, “almost striking one.”

Those similarities don’t establish that Foster supplied MBI with that description.

In fact, Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin Holloway declined to tell Mississippi Today where that assertion originated or whether investigators obtained it from officers’ statements, body-camera footage or other evidence.

That is precisely why the public needs the video.

Who Told MBI the Car Nearly Hit an Officer?

This should now be one of the central questions of the investigation.

Where did the phrase come from?

Was Foster interviewed?

What did he tell investigators?

What did the other officers say?

Did every officer independently describe the vehicle as threatening?

Does Walmart surveillance footage show the vehicle moving toward an officer?

Does body-camera footage?

Where exactly were officers standing when the shots were fired?

And most importantly:

Does the video support the original police narrative?

Those questions aren’t conspiratorial.

They’re investigative.

A previous lawsuit accused an officer involved in the current investigation of exaggerating a remarkably similar vehicle threat. That history makes independent evidence more important, not less.

The Family’s Autopsy Complicates the Story Further

Kohen’s family has already challenged the government’s description of what happened.

Civil-rights attorney Ben Crump commissioned an independent autopsy. According to Mississippi Today, the family’s forensic pathologist concluded that Kohen was struck by a bullet fired from at least an intermediate distance and from the side.

Crump argues that finding indicates officers weren’t directly in the vehicle’s path when they fired.

That is the family’s interpretation, not a final government finding.

But it adds another reason why the video matters.

The physical evidence can be compared against the positions of the car and officers captured by cameras.

This case doesn’t need competing press conferences.

It needs evidence.

And There Is More in Foster’s Record

The Waffle House lawsuit isn’t the only prior allegation involving Foster.

During his later employment with the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, Foster and three other deputies were sued by a woman who alleged excessive force during an August 2022 traffic stop.

The woman alleged officers beat her, knocking out teeth and breaking her jaw in three places.

Foster’s attorneys denied the allegations.

A federal judge dismissed the case in March 2026. Mississippi Today noted that the plaintiff’s specific allegation concerning Foster was that he handled her too roughly while handcuffing her.

Again, allegations aren’t findings.

But police departments don’t have the luxury of ignoring patterns simply because individual lawsuits don’t end in judgments against officers.

Hiring, supervision and internal review exist precisely to examine an officer’s complete professional history.

Senatobia police spokesperson Lt. Shane Howell declined to tell Mississippi Today whether the department knew about Foster’s involvement in the two federal lawsuits when it hired him.

Foster joined Senatobia police in March 2025.

Six months later, he was promoted to sergeant.

Release the Video

This is where the story becomes infuriating.

MBI has the body-camera footage.

Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell confirmed investigators obtained it. Authorities have also sought or obtained surveillance evidence from Walmart.

Yet the public still hasn’t been allowed to see the central visual evidence showing what happened when police opened fire.

That secrecy becomes harder to defend as more information about the officers involved emerges.

If the footage shows the vehicle accelerating directly toward an officer, release it when legally permissible and allow the evidence to support that account.

If it doesn’t, the public needs to know that too.

Kohen’s mother says she tried to show police that her baby was inside the vehicle before the shooting. She has described hearing several shots. Her attorneys have repeatedly demanded release of body-camera, dash-camera and Walmart surveillance footage.

A 1-year-old child is dead.

The government should eventually be able to show exactly why deadly force was used.

This Is Bigger Than Foster

This shouldn’t become an exercise in declaring Foster guilty before investigators finish their work.

We still don’t publicly know whether Foster fired his weapon during the Senatobia shooting.

We don’t know whether he supplied MBI with the “almost striking” description.

We don’t know everything captured by the body cameras.

And the earlier lawsuit ended without a judicial finding that Foster falsified anything.

Those facts matter.

But accountability doesn’t require pretending an officer’s history is irrelevant.

The earlier case demonstrates exactly why independent video can be essential when police reports describe vehicles as deadly threats.

In 2019, Foster was accused of saying a vehicle almost ran over an officer when surveillance footage reportedly failed to show it.

In 2026, an official statement once again says a vehicle almost struck an officer during an encounter involving Foster.

This time, a baby died.

The public should not be asked to choose between believing the police and believing Kohen Wiley’s family when cameras may be capable of answering the question themselves.

Release the evidence.

Let everyone see what the car actually did.

And if the footage doesn’t match the story told after Kohen was killed, Mississippi will have a much bigger problem than one officer’s history.

—Barrington Williams, B1Daily