On October 19, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office found that a Senatobia police officer’s use of force was justified in the June 14 shooting that killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley. The officer will not face criminal charges. CNN’s headline has one actor, the attorney general, who “says”. The force has no hand, the death has no cause, and the boy arrives last. That is the act with no actor: “in death of” lets a killing read like an illness. The first sentence of the same page puts it back: the officer “fired at a moving vehicle that investigators said was driving toward police, killing a 1-year-old boy who was inside the car.” The tell: when a death has no one doing it, look for who the sentence dropped. The frame picks the feeling. The same finding reached readers as “clears Senatobia police officer who shot, killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley” at Mississippi Today, 25 minutes before CNN’s, and as “Police Shooting of Toddler” in The New York Times. With the shooter in the sentence, the finding reads as one office’s judgment of an act a reader can see. Without him, it reads as the last word on a sad event. CNN’s page carries the Associated Press story, whose own headline names the officer’s force. The attorney general’s statement says only “one officer”; FOX13 reports state records identify Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, placed on administrative leave. The Mississippi Free Press reports Vellesiya Wiley lifted her son to show officers a child was inside, then one officer fired, killing him in her arms and wounding the driver, Latoya Ferrell. Ben Crump, the family’s lawyer, says a preliminary independent autopsy shows Kohen was shot from the side. The officer’s lawyer told AP: “He had no choice but to fire his weapon”.
