In the early morning hours of July 6, 36-year-old Sonya Massey of Springfield, Illinois, called 911 to report an intruder in her home. Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Shawn Grayson and another deputy responded about 1:50 a.m. Thirty minutes later, Grayson fatally shot Massey in the face. His justification for using deadly force was so implausible that he was fired last week. Charged For first-degree murder.
Body camera footage The report, released Monday, sheds light on the circumstances surrounding the shooting, which President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris publicly condemned this week. After searching the property and finding no intruders, Grayson and his associate repeatedly knock on Massie’s door. It takes her a while to answer, and she explains that she was getting dressed. Her demeanor is calm but she is acting strangely. After she opens the door, she says, “Please don’t hurt me.” She says she hears “someone outside the house,” and adds, looking at her cellphone, “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Grayson explains that he and the other deputies saw no signs of an intruder. “Oh my God, oh my God,” Massey says. “I’m trying to call for help… oh my God, oh my God. I don’t know what to do… I heard someone talking outside.” Grayson repeats that there is no one and appears to be about to leave, then asks, “Is there anything else I can do to help you?” He then asks, “Are you mentally okay?” Massey says, Independent He answers, “I’ve been told I have a mental illness,” and says, “Yes,” and mentions “my medication.”
Grayson asks Massey for her ID and follows her into her home as she goes to retrieve it. Another deputy enters the home and looks around, presumably continuing to search for an intruder. Sitting on the living room couch, Massey clutches her wallet and says, distracted, “I have some paperwork.” Grayson tries to get her to focus on her ID. “Just your name,” he says. “And you can get out of here… Just your driver’s license. And you can get out of your head.”
Then something strange happens. Grayson points to a pot of boiling water on the stove in the kitchen next to the living room and says, “We don’t need to light a fire while we’re here.” Massie walks into the kitchen and takes the pot off the stove, responding. Massie, who is in the living room on the other side of the kitchen counter, clearly steps back because Massie asks, “Where are you going?” Grayson laughs and mentions “hot, steaming water,” and Massie jokingly says, “I want to get away from hot, steaming water.” After setting the pot on the counter, Massie calmly but eerily says, “In the name of Jesus, I rebuke you.” Grayson says, “What?” and she repeats the words.
At that moment, Grayson’s amusement instantly turns to alarm. “The fucker better not do that,” he says, reaching for the gun. “I swear to God, I’m going to shoot the motherfucker in the face.” Then he pulls the gun out and aims it at Massie, who flinches and picks up the pan again, holding it in front of her head as a shield. “Okay, sorry.” She leans behind the counter, still holding the pan. “Drop the motherfucking pan!” Grayson yells. Seconds later, Grayson fires three shots, one of which hits Massie in the head.
After the shooting, another deputy said, “I’m going to go get some gear,” meaning he was going to provide medical assistance. “No, he was shot in the head, man.” Grayson replied. “It’s over. You can go get it. But he was shot in the head. Shit. F*ck. I’m not gonna put boiling water on his f*cking head. It’s f*cking at our feet. F*cking… what else are you gonna do? I’m not gonna put boiling water on his f*cking face. It’s already gotten to us.”
When other officers arrived, Grayson told one officer: “She had boiling water and she came to me with boiling water… She said she was going to rebuke me in the name of Jesus and she came to me. [me] “In boiling water.”
Grayson later told investigators that he was defending himself from the threat of a pot of hot water. But as First Assistant Secretary Mary Rogers noted in a July 18 article, petition In an effort to deny Grayson his pretrial release, “the pot was in another room of the house, separated from it by a large counter.” Grayson “was still in the living room area.” But “despite the distance and relative concealment,” Grayson “pulled out a 9 mm gun, not the less-lethal Taser on his duty vest, and threatened to shoot Mr. Massey in the face.”
Rogers says Massie “put her hands up and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then ducked behind the counter separating her from the deputy.” Massie “closed the gap between her and him with his gun still drawn” and “aggressively yelled at Massie to put the pan down.” He “then fired his service gun in her direction, striking her once in the face.”
A use-of-force expert consulted by Illinois State Police while they were investigating the shooting concluded that Grayson “did not justify the use of deadly force,” Rogers notes. The expert likened the scenario to “an officer intentionally and unnecessarily standing in front of a moving vehicle and justifying the use of force because of fear of being hit.”
The incident has sparked commentary on racial bias by police, as Massey is black and Grayson is white. “Sonya Massey, a loving mother, friend, daughter, young black woman, should be alive today,” Biden said. said On Monday, “Sonya called police out of concern for a potential intruder. When we call for help, we Americans should be able to do so without fearing for our lives, no matter who we are or where we live. Sonya’s death at the hands of responding police is a reminder that too often Black Americans face fear for their safety in ways that many of us do not.”
The next day, Harris, a presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential candidate, implied that Grayson would have handled the situation differently if Massie had been white. “Sonya Massie deserved to be safe,” Harris said. said In a written statement. “After she called police for help, she was tragically murdered in her own home by the responding officers who were sworn to protect and serve… Our thoughts are also with communities across our country who often reach out to us with suspicion, distrust, and even violence. The disturbing footage released yesterday confirms what many have known from their own lived experiences: We have much work to do to ensure that our justice system lives up to its name and functions fully.”
Even without speculating on exactly why Grayson perceived Massey as a threat that warranted a lethal response, anyone watching the body camera footage can see that his perception did not match reality. When he encountered the danger from the water bottle, it was not a lethal threat, and he could have neutralized it without firing a gun. Instead, as Rogers observed, he escalated the threat by approaching Massey with his gun drawn when he could have maintained a safe distance.
Under Illinois State Law“A person who kills an individual without legal justification is considered to have committed first-degree murder if “the person intends to kill the individual or cause great bodily harm to the individual,” “knows that such act will cause the individual’s death,” or “knows that such act is reasonably likely to cause the individual’s death or great bodily harm.” If convicted, Grayson Charged For serious assault and misconduct in office, face Sentenced to life imprisonment for 45 years.
Grayson’s senseless violence raises questions about how someone with such poor judgment ended up working for the San Gamon County Sheriff’s Office, where he’s been for over a year. Grayson “worked for six different law enforcement agencies over the last four years,” WGN9 report. His employment history includes less than a year with the Auburn, Illinois, police department, a year with the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, and brief stints with the Burden, Kincaid, and Ponie police departments.
That employment history wasn’t the only warning sign. “Grayson had been arrested twice for first-degree misdemeanor DUIs, in 2015 and 2016,” WGN reported. “All these red flags were there,” said Massey’s father, James Wilburn. “And yet they kept him [Sangamon] army.”
This case also highlights the value of body camera footage. If Grayson’s account of what happened was accurate, the footage would confirm it. But because the footage clearly contradicts his claim that Massey “came at me with boiling water,” he could be held accountable for an otherwise justified and reckless use of deadly force.
