Sonya Massey’s mother, black woman killed in her home by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy earlier this month, called 911 the day before the fatal shooting to ask for help for her daughter but told the dispatcher she feared police would hurt her, according to recordings released Wednesday by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department.
“Please don’t send in aggressive, prejudiced police,” Massey’s mother Donna said in the call. “I’m afraid of the police.” She added, “Sometimes they make the situation worse.”
Donna Massey called 911 on July 5 around 9 a.m. to say her daughter was having a “nervous breakdown” and needed help. “She’s not a danger to herself, she’s not a danger to me,” Massey said in the call. She called Massey’s mental episode “paranoid schizophrenia.”
Sonya Massey, a mother of two, called 911 in the early hours of Saturday, July 6, to report a suspected prowler outside her home near Springfield, Illinois. Two police officers responded to the call. After searching outside, they entered Massey’s home to ask more questions, but after a tense exchange over a pot of hot water, an officer shot Massey as she crouched in her kitchen, body camera video shows.
The deputy who opened fire, Sean Grayson, who is white, has been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in Massey’s deathHe has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is being held in the Sangamon County Jail awaiting trial. He was released by the sheriff’s office after the shooting.
The 911 recordings released Wednesday also show that some officers and first responders, immediately after the shooting, discussed whether Massey had shot herself.
“They’re now saying it was a self-inflicted attack,” one official said in a call to report the police shooting.
“Either she did it herself or they shot her,” another official said in a follow-up call. It was not clear from the calls where the false information that the shooting may have been self-inflicted came from.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department said officers on the scene knew all along that Grayson was the one who shot Massey and that at 1:27 a.m., sheriff’s office management was notified of a deputy-involved shooting.
An autopsy report It was confirmed that Massey was hit just below the left eye and the bullet exited through the back of her neck. The bullet fractured her skull, punctured her carotid artery and caused a brain hemorrhage.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department also released a recording of Massey’s 911 call at 12:49 a.m. on July 6. “I keep hearing noises outside the house. It sounds like someone is banging on the outside of my house, I don’t know. Can you come check it out?” Massey said.
Body camera video shows the officers searching Massey’s property, then knocking at least five times before Massey opens the door. They are later seen inside his home, and the other officer’s camera captures the scene as Grayson shoots Massey.
Grayson The file was examined closely after the shooting. He had a disciplinary record that included accusations of intimidating behavior and abuse of power, according to documents obtained by CBS News.
CBS News Previously reported Grayson pleaded guilty twice to driving under the influence of alcohol before becoming a police officer, serving in six different departments in four years and leaving the military after just 19 months.
In a recording released by the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, where Grayson worked from May 2022 to April 2023, a senior officer is heard berating Grayson for what the senior officer called a lack of integrity, for lying in his reports and for what he called “official misconduct.”
“The sheriff and I will not tolerate lies or deception,” the officer tells him in the audio recording of a November 2022 meeting obtained by CBS News. At one point, the supervising officer warns Grayson that “the officers [like you] were charged and ended up in prison.
Grayson’s attorney declined to comment to CBS News.
—Alturo Rhymes contributed reporting.
