Op-Ed: We Have To Keep Sonya Massey’s Name Alive
Last summer, on July 6, we learned of a new reason for the police to kill an unarmed Black person: a pot of hot water.
Sonya Massey, then 36, called 911 when she suspected an intruder at her home in Springfield, Illinois.
According to an Illinois State Police summary of her shooting death, when police arrived, deputies did indeed see a car at Massey’s home that looked broken into. After knocking on the door, the two officers claimed they found her “distraught and not thinking clearly.” But instead of treating her as a person in need of help, she was ultimately treated as a criminal, and after an exchange, subsequently executed.
Sangamon County Deputy Sean Grayson, reportedly roughly 10 feet from Massey, motioned to a pot on the stove in her kitchen. At one point, Grayson responds to Massey, “Getting away from your hot, steaming water.” In response, the summary says she repeats twice, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” Massey said twice.
Grayson greeted that with, “I swear to God. I will shoot you right in your f—— face.”
And so he did, but not before she dropped the pot and crouched below a line of cabinets with her hands in the air after apologizing as he drew his gun and pointed it at her.
Though she did get back up and grabbed the pot again in defense, when she threw the water, Grayson’s response was to fire his gun three times – one of the bullets went directly into her face.
If this does not sound barbaric enough, after the shooting, when the second deputy in the home claimed he planned to retrieve a medical kit, Grayson told him not to. The other deputy did anyway and remained with Massey until medical help arrived. Grayson never bothered to help the distressed woman he was sent there to help, but ended up shooting her in the face.
He has since been indicted on charges of first-degree murder, and more recently, a new pre-trial date has been set, and he will stand trial Oct. 20 for the murder of Sonya Massey.
Massey’s family attended the brief pre-trial hearing before Seventh Circuit Court Presiding Judge Ryan Cadagin last month.
Sontae Massey, a cousin of Sonya Massey, told reporters, “We’re going to be at all of the hearings. They could have a hundred hearings between now and Oct. 20. We’ll be at each and every one of them.”
In February, the family reached a $10 million settlement with officials in Sangamon County, Illinois.
As much as they seek justice for her killing, however, a separate interview highlights that beyond her victimhood, Sonya Massey was a mother and a loving person who has left behind a hole in the hearts of family, friends, and the people in her community.
Speaking with NewsChannel20 in Springfield, Illinois, ahead of the one-year anniversary of her shooting, Massey’s family described her as “a hard-working mother who ensured her kids were well taken care of.”
Indeed, her son, Malachi Hill-Massey, spoke fondly of his late mom in an interview with the Springfield State Journal-Register ahead of his high school graduation.
“She showed me ways of her being caring,” Hill-Massey explained. “She’s a helper, a carer, for everybody. She would help somebody before she would help herself.”
He said he finished school early “for his mom” and Sonya’s mother, Donna Massey, said in the same interview, “We’re so happy that he’s made his mama proud,” she said. “We can feel her shining down on us. I know she’s happy.
And he has a plan: he will attend trade school for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, citing his mom as his motivation to succeed.
Still, it was hard to read him say, “I think about it all the time,” about her killing.
“I’m young. I need my mom still.”
And as a grieving son, I related to him saying he is following the trial “as much as I can,” but “I’m still grieving. It’s a wearing process. I’ve lost people before, but when it’s someone you’re with literally every single day, someone I talked to every single day, it’s different.”
As for her shooter, Sean Grayson, charged with Sonya Massey’s murder: “You can’t say it’s not senseless. You were supposed to be protecting her. How could you turn your gun on her? Why would you even think about lethal force before a taser? He could have tased my mom. He could have pepper-sprayed her, anything before shooting her.”
As frustrating as her loss remains, I take heed to her cousin Sontae Massey’s caution that while the world remembers Sonya as “the tiny woman speaking to the police in the final moments of her life, she’s so much more than that.”
“I miss her everyday,” Sontae shared. “I miss the Sonya that, I would go over to mom’s house, and we would crack jokes, and she would make fun of me and she would share a laugh with me. I miss that Sonya.”
The family said that they feel the hype of Sonya’s name has started to die down, thus doing interviews like that one to do everything in their power to keep her name alive.
That is admirable, especially given the circumstances, but let us do our part to help keep her name alive.
Not only as a victim of police brutality, but as a loving mother, daughter, cousin, and friend who brightened the lives of the people around her, and like far too many Black people in this country, continues to have their light unjustly and untimely dimmed.
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