A fire tore through the Senatobia Police Department early Saturday morning, and federal agents are now investigating whether someone deliberately set it ablaze at a department already reeling from months of public fury. The blaze struck a police force in the small Mississippi city that has been under intense scrutiny since a toddler was fatally shot by one of its officers in June and its former chief was ousted over racist text messages.
Officials said the fire appears to be arson, though the cause remains under investigation, according to Darkhorse Press, which reported that special agents were on scene investigating a fire that occurred around 4:30 a.m. A separate report citing a Senatobia Fire Department statement said firefighters were dispatched to the department at 4:58 a.m., according to WOKV. Firefighters extinguished the fire quickly, per seed reporting from The Independent, and the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Despite the damage to the building, the department says it continues to operate and provide police services without interruption, per the same Darkhorse Press account. The ATF's New Orleans Field Division and local agencies are investigating whether someone committed arson at the department, and Tate County Sheriff Luke Shepherd said his office responded early Saturday morning and is assisting the Senatobia Police Department and the ATF in the probe, the outlet reported.
A Department Already Under Siege
The fire comes after months of mounting criticism directed at the Senatobia Police Department, which has drawn outrage from the community in recent months, according to WOKV. Much of that anger traces back to June, when a Senatobia police officer fatally shot 1-year-old Kohen Wiley while investigating a Walmart shoplifting call. Wiley, who was Black, was in a vehicle with his mother when he was shot, and his mother was unharmed while her friend was seriously injured, according to CNN.
The two women have denied stealing anything, and authorities have filed charges against neither of them, CNN reported. The Mississippi Attorney General's Office later concluded that the officer's use of force was justified, finding there was insufficient evidence of criminal conduct to present the case to a grand jury. The officer involved, Sgt. Hunter Foster, resigned after being cleared of criminal wrongdoing, WOKV reported.
Kohen Wiley's family has not accepted that conclusion quietly. The family's attorney, Ben Crump, called the officer's actions “excessive” during a press conference, according to ABC News. Body-camera footage of the shooting was released by the Mississippi Department of Public Safety on October 22, days after the attorney general's October 19 finding, according to the Mississippi Free Press.
A Chief's Racist Texts Fueled the Firestorm
The shooting was not the department's only source of turmoil this year. Former Police Chief Harold “Hal” Vanderford, 60, who took over the role in October 2025, came under fire in September after reporters found he had used a racist slur more than a dozen times across 10 separate text conversations, according to the New York Times. Three acquaintances confirmed that the phone number tied to the messages belonged to Vanderford, per reporting from Mississippi Today.
In the texts, Vanderford wrote that he had a “racist moment” and claimed he “almost beat” a Black man while using the slur, and he said he had loudly repeated the slur at home hoping his neighbors would hear him, according to Mississippi Today's account cited in the dossier. Vanderford submitted his resignation, but the Senatobia Board of Aldermen unanimously rejected it and voted instead to terminate him, the Times reported. He was fired in September, less than two weeks after the New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News revealed his pattern of using racist slurs in private texts, according to Mississippi Today's October coverage.
Unanswered Questions Linger
It remains unclear whether the public unrest surrounding the department in recent months is connected in any way to the fire, Darkhorse Press reported. Investigators have not said whether the blaze is tied to the Wiley shooting, the backlash over Vanderford's texts, or neither. For now, the Senatobia Police Department says it is still answering calls and patrolling the city of roughly 40 miles south of Memphis, even as federal agents sift through what is left of its own building.
