Sonya Massey’s father says family was ‘misled’ about her death and ‘never told’ she was shot by police
‘If it were not for the body cam footage, we would not have known that this occurred,’ said James Wilburn, father of slain Illinois woman Sonya Massey.
James Wilburn, the father of Sonya Massey, says recently released body cam footage of his daughter’s fatal shooting by police is “probably the most horrible, heart-wrenching thing that [our family has] ever seen in our lives.” Nevertheless, he is thankful it exists.
“If it were not for the body cam footage, we would not have known that this occurred,” Wilburn told “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King as he sat alongside family attorney Ben Crump on Wednesday.
As previously reported by theGrio, on July 6, Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two teen children, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in her Springfield, Illinois, home after calling 911, fearing that a prowler was at her residence. Confirmed by her family to have previously been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Massey told the two officers arriving on the scene she had “taken [her] medicine,” and was following instructions to move a pot of water boiling on her stove when she was shot three times by Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson.
Now dismissed from the force, Grayson is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct. It has also been revealed the officer shuffled between six different law enforcement agencies over the past four years. While the disgraced officer claimed Massey “came at [him] with boiling water,” court documents filed by prosecutors characterized her as “calm, possibly unwell, and non-aggressive” during the interaction.
Wilburn said he and Massey’s family were not initially told her death was the result of a police shooting.
“I was never told that it was a deputy-involved shooting. We were under the impression that she was killed by the intruder, or some other person from the street, and they just went in there and found her dead body,” Wilburn told King, later noting there were even rumored suggestions that his daughter’s injuries were self-inflicted.
With the public release of body cam footage by Illinois State Police on Monday, a clearer picture of Massey’s final moments emerged, including a tense verbal exchange in which she tells deputies, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” while complying with their demands. She is also heard apologizing to Grayson as he aims his weapon at her, just seconds before he approaches her and follows through on a verbal threat to “shoot [her] in the face.”
“I think that she feared for her life,” said Wilburn when asked to explain what his daughter might have meant by her rebuke. “There was something, some premonition that she had…It’s just unexplainable.”
Also inexplicable is why Grayson did not turn on his recording apparatus until after the shooting; the footage was recovered from the other deputy’s body cam.
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In a statement issued Tuesday, President Joe Biden offered a rebuke of his own, saying in part:
“Sonya Massey, a beloved mother, friend, daughter, and young Black woman, should be alive today… When we call for help, all of us as Americans – regardless of who we are or where we live – should be able to do so without fearing for our lives.
“Sonya’s death at the hands of a responding officer reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not,” he added, advocating for the long-delayed passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Massey family attorney Crump had a harsher message as he held a press conference Monday: “Until we get justice for Sonya Massey, we rebuke this discriminatory justice system in the name of Jesus.”
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