by Eric Goldfarb
SENATOBIA, Miss.—People scattered in a Walmart parking lot on [last] Tuesday as law enforcement officers, who were wearing gas masks and lined up under the store’s grocery-side entrance, unleashed tear gas on the crowd that had gathered to protest the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley [pictured above]. Two days earlier on June 14, the young Black child died after a Senatobia police officer fired into a moving car, killing him and injuring the driver. Officers, who had been responding to a call alleging that someone had tried to steal a box of diapers, claimed that the car was driving toward the officer when he fired—a claim that some witnesses have disputed. —Mississippi Free Press, June 17, 2026
The report said: one box of diapers.
The report said: they saw the child first.
The report did not say what diapers cost,
only who was made to pay.
Eric Goldfarb writes poems and essays about the quiet reinventions that shape a life. His work appears or is forthcoming in ONE ART, Hippocampus Magazine, Third Wednesday, Midsummer Dream House, Panorama, and elsewhere. After decades in technology and private equity, he returned to the page. He lives with his wife in Atlanta.
