The mother of a one-year-old who was shot to death by police outside a Mississippi Walmart has claimed she warned officers her baby was in the vehicle before they opened fire.

Vellesiya Wiley shared the heart-stopping moments leading to her son Kohen’s death on Sunday.

The child’s death has since sparked fierce protests, with demonstrators tear-gassed as they clashed with police.

Wiley said she, Kohen and a friend were shopping at a Walmart in Senatobia when officers from the Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s Department tried to stop her friend, whom they accused of shoplifting diapers.

Wiley said she kept walking with Kohen back to the vehicle, figuring the situation had nothing to do with her.

‘By the time me and my baby got in the car, she came,’ Wiley said of her friend, who has not been identified.

When the friend then backed the vehicle up, Wiley said officers approached and started to draw their guns.

‘I raised my baby up, trying to show that he was in the car,’ she said. Still, police opened fire, striking Kohen and Wiley’s friend.

Vellesiya Wiley opened up about the moments leading to her one-year-old son Kohen’s death at the hands of police on Sunday

The infant was fatally shot in the ribcage and was pronounced dead at a local hospital

‘By the time I set my baby down, it was like three to four shots,’ she recounted. ‘One of the shots hit him in his ribcage and the other shot hit her in her arm and her thigh.’

Kohen was later pronounced dead at a local hospital and his body was sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Jackson.

Meanwhile, her friend was airlifted to another hospital, where family members told WREG she was left in critical condition.

Neither Wiley nor her friend have been charged with any wrongdoing, she said as she insisted security footage from the self-checkout lane would show her friend paying for the diapers she was accused of shoplifting.

She also refuted police officers’ claims that her friend had been driving toward the officers when they opened fire.

‘They was all on the right side, and she was driving towards the left,’ Wiley claimed.

The officer who killed Kohen has been placed on administrative leave as the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation investigates the fatal shooting.

But Wiley’s attorney Ben Crump argued on social media that: ‘For Kohen’s family, leave is not accountability!’

‘Join us in demanding the release of all body camera and surveillance footage and a full, transparent investigation into this heartbreaking tragedy,’ he said Wednesday.

Wiley said she lifted her son up so that police officers could see there was a baby in the car before they opened fire

A bullet hole can be seen appearing to have struck the passenger side of the vehicle 

Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said the footage would not be released until MBI finishes its investigation, the Mississippi Free Press reports. 

Five Mississippi Department of Public Safety agents have been assigned to investigate the fatal shooting in coordination with the state’s Attorney General’s office, he said as he vowed transparency.

The agency will now thoroughly review witness testimony and videos that captured the shooting, including officers’ body-worn camera and Walmart security camera footage, Tindell said at a news conference on Tuesday night.

‘It’s important that we keep civility during this process, so we can get to the bottom of it and analyze all the evidence and ultimately make it available to you,’ he noted.

But the fatal shooting has already sparked a massive protest outside the Walmart on Tuesday, where law enforcement officers in gas masks deployed tear gas to disperse the crowds.

Residents at the protest said they believe local law enforcement has unnecessarily escalated its interactions with the community in recent years.

Three years ago, officers arrested a ten-year-old boy for urinating next to his mother’s car while she was in an attorney’s office. 

The fatal shooting has already sparked a massive protest outside the Walmart on Tuesday, where law enforcement officers in gas masks deployed tear gas to disperse the crowds

A makeshift memorial was set up outside the Walmart for Kohen Wiley

The child was initially sentenced to probation and was required to write a two-page report on Kobe Bryant before the case was dismissed. 

In another incident last year, Breshari Faulkner was forced to the ground after she was accused of illegally parking in a handicap spot – even though she told officers the handicap tag was for her grandmother who was inside a nearby store, according to NBC News. 

‘We lost a child because of carelessness, recklessness of the police,’ Faulkner said at the protest on Tuesday.

‘This was going to eventually end up with them killing someone because they overreact on small things they shouldn’t escalate.’ 

Mark Lesure, another lifelong resident, said the most recent incident involving Kohen made him ‘very angry, furious.’

‘We’ve had a lot of situations of police brutality that led up to this right here,’ he noted, saying that the brutality was ‘left unchecked.’

‘If it had been checked in the past, maybe we wouldn’t be talking about this baby being killed,’ Lesure lamented. 

In a statement, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said: ‘MBI is currently assessing this critical incident and gathering evidence. Upon completing the investigation, agents will share their findings with the Attorney General’s Office. This information is preliminary and subject to change.’

The Daily Mail has contacted the local police for comment.