The white Mississippi cop accused of fatally shooting a Black baby and injuring a Black woman over alleged stolen diapers faces fresh allegations of directing a racist remark at a fellow officer. The revelation is sparking new outrage online.
Two days before the June 14 shooting, Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster called his co-worker, Dexter Smith, “a Black motherf–ker,” according to an internal complaint obtained by the local news outlet Mississippi Today.
A month after filing that complaint, Smith resigned, citing a lack of “any meaningful response or resolution” to the situation. Mississippi Today, which read the resignation email, reported that the remark played a role in his decision to leave.
The Racist Remark
The complaint says the incident happened in the department’s booking room, where Smith was filing paperwork.
“Who is this Black motherf*cker back there?” Foster allegedly asked.
Smith said the sergeant repeated the question within earshot of other officers. He wrote in the complaint: “I replied that I had been in the sun from training all week and that I had tanned from the sun.”
“Upon Sergeant Foster making the extremely unprofessional remark, the room went silent, and I printed my paperwork and left,” he added. “I have never had any one-on-one conversation with Sergeant Foster, nor do we have any outside relationship to be on a level for him to speak to me in that manner.”
Smith said the booking room had audio and video surveillance that easily could have proved his allegations, but the department ignored it.
Deadly Shooting
Two days later, an officer opened fire on two young Black women and an infant in a Walmart parking lot. Foster was at the scene and has been widely reported as the shooter, though authorities have not officially confirmed it.
The shots killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was sitting in his mother’s lap, and critically injured the driver, 21-year-old Latoya Ferrell. Kohen’s mother, 19-year-old Vellesiya Wiley, escaped unharmed.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said officers were responding to a shoplifting call when they spotted the group “fleeing from the store into a vehicle,” and that the car drove directly toward an officer before he fired.
In a June 18 interview with the Mississippi Free Press, Vellesiya disputed this account, saying Ferrell steered away from officers, not toward them, a version of events multiple witnesses have backed up.
The shooting sparked widespread outrage, and the Senatobia Police Department placed Foster on leave two days later.
History Repeats Itself
The department has faced serious racism accusations before.
In 2023, it fired an officer for arresting a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in a parking lot; the boy’s family later settled a federal lawsuit with the city.
A Black woman filed another federal lawsuit in 2024 alleging an officer sexually assaulted her during a traffic stop after turning off his body camera. That lawsuit is still pending.
And just last year, a Senatobia officer forcibly handcuffed a Black woman outside the same Walmart over a handicap parking space dispute.
Ben Crump and Van Turner, the Wiley family’s attorneys, ordered an independent autopsy and released its findings, which show Kohen was shot from the side, contradicting the official police account of how events unfolded.
The legal team has also called for the immediate release of bodycam footage, but authorities have refused, saying it will come once the investigation is complete.
