Mississippi police chief fired after reports of racist texts following toddler’s fatal shooting

The police chief of a northern Mississippi city where officers responding to a shoplifting call fatally shot 1-year-old Kohen Wiley was fired Tuesday amid a new controversy.

Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford submitted his resignation the same day, but the city's board of aldermen declined to acknowledge it and instead voted unanimously to fire the chief, according to the city clerk, who did not elaborate on their reasons.

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Dig deeper:

The firing followed reporting by The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News last month that alleged Vanderford used racist slurs in private text conversations with a colleague. It also comes amid the aftermath of the child's shooting and other incidents.

The toddler Wiley was fatally shot and another woman was wounded June 14 after a Senatobia police officer fired into a vehicle while investigating a shoplifting call at a Walmart. The boy's mother, Vellesiya Wiley, denied that she or a friend accompanying her had stolen anything, and no charges have been filed against them.

The officer who shot Wiley and the woman driving the car the child was in has been placed on administrative leave while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation looks into the shooting.

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The backstory:

Kohen Wiley was Black, as is his mother. The death ignited anger in a small city where tensions between Black residents and the police have boiled over in recent years. Senatobia, with a population of more than 8,000, is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of Memphis.

What's next:

Senatobia Alderman Chris McConnell called for an independent investigation of the police department.

"We need answers about departmental leadership, internal culture, the handling of complaints and misconduct, financial practices, and whether the Board has been receiving the information necessary to provide proper oversight," McConnell said in a statement. "Our citizens deserve a police department they can trust."

National civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Kohen Wiley's family, called the chief's firing the "right decision."

"The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process," Crump said in a statement calling for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to release body-camera footage of the shooting. "Give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died."

The Senatobia Police Department declined to comment on the firing, and Vanderford could not be immediately located for a response Wednesday.

Big picture view:

Vanderford was appointed police chief on Sept. 29, 2025, after the board of aldermen declined to reappoint the previous chief, Richard Chandler, in July of that year.

Chandler led the police department through several controversies. They included the 2023 arrest of a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public and an incident in which an officer threatened a woman with a Taser and pulled her from her car during a dispute over a handicapped parking space outside the same Walmart where the child was shot.

Mississippi