To her large, extended family, the July 6 shooting death of Sonya Massey was a shocking and devastating loss of a single mother and a God-fearing woman struggling with mental-health issues who loved her two teenage children and was loved.
To the world, the end of the 36-year-old Woodside Township Black woman’s life – brought about by the actions of a white Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy and captured on police body-worn camera footage in Massey’s home – became a viral video that once again focused the nation’s attention on police brutality, unequal justice and institutional racism.
Massey’s death resulted in murder charges and a pending trial for Riverton resident Sean Grayson, 30. The tragedy also brought fears of rioting and increased mistrust of local law enforcement amid an ongoing racial reckoning in Springfield, a community where a 1908 race riot contributed to the creation of the NAACP.
Springfield native Teresa Haley, a friend of the Massey family and immediate past president of the Springfield branch and Illinois State Conference of the NAACP, said she prays that Massey’s death leads to positive change on the local and national level.
“But you know, right now people are still very emotional,” Haley told Illinois Times.
“We don’t want Sonya’s death to be in vain, because it was a senseless murder,” Haley said, “and we want people to continue to say her name and to remember the violence that she felt and the violence that her family members felt as a result of this and the changes that need to happen, not just in Springfield, Illinois, but throughout this country and around the world.”
Haley said Massey should be remembered as “a young, Black woman whose life was cut too short. She was assassinated by a member of law enforcement, which never should have happened.
“She was a mother who loved her children and who won’t be there to kiss them and to buy them gifts and watch them open gifts on Christmas Day. Hanging out with the Massey family, I realize how much Sonya loved her family, especially her two kids. … The world watched this young mother be assassinated on video, and people are still asking questions why,” Haley said.
The video shows a verbal exchange between Grayson and Massey, who was unarmed, in which Grayson is calm at one point after entering Massey’s home a few blocks outside Springfield’s southern border and then becomes angry and apparently believes Massey is getting ready to throw a pot of hot water at him and another police officer.
Grayson, in the video, appears to become agitated after Massey says to him, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” It’s unclear why Massey made this statement, and it’s unclear how Grayson, who has pleaded innocent, interpreted her statement.
The Illinois Appellate Court’s decision the day before Thanksgiving to order local authorities to release Grayson pretrial with conditions was an insult and ruined the family’s holiday, Haley said.
She said the family was relieved to learn of the Illinois Supreme Court’s Dec. 10 decision to delay Grayson’s release from the Macon County Jail in Decatur until the high court decides whether to hear Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser’s appeal of the Appellate Court ruling.
But Haley said she and others advocating for justice for Massey want to see state law changed to give local judges more authority to order alleged murderers and others charged with serious crimes held in jail while awaiting trial.
Springfield resident Marc Ayers, a Democrat on the Republican-controlled Sangamon County Board, never knew Massey. But he said he is working to reform the sheriff’s department because of her death to remove the hiring process from political influence and corruption and improve mental health resources in the county.
Ayers said Massey was “a woman who had a bright future ahead of her, and her life was taken by the actions of a horrible deputy who never should have been hired in the first place.”
The Massey case has “awoken a lot of young voices in the county who really were not involved before,” he added.
The ongoing political debate about what path elected leaders should take, as well as an ongoing investigation into the sheriff’s department and Sangamon County government as a whole by the U.S. Department of Justice, all are healthy developments, Sangamon County Board Chair Andy Van Meter said.
Massey, he said, was “an innocent, troubled soul whose death was an act of pure evil, but whose death will spark positive change in our community.”
Change already has begun in the wake of Massey’s death, Van Meter said.
“I think it’s opened up a much-needed dialogue in a corner of the community that has felt unheard,” he said.
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer for Illinois Times.
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This article appears in Remembering 2024.
