Midwest
Bodycam video reveals chaotic scene of deputy fatally shooting Sonya Massey, who called 911 for help
Sonya Massey ducked and apologized to an Illinois sheriff’s deputy seconds before he shot the Black woman three times in her home, with one fatal blow to the head, as seen in body camera video released Monday.
An Illinois grand jury indicted former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, 30, who is white, last week. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct.
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The video confirmed prosecutors’ earlier account of the tense moment when Grayson yelled from across a counter at Massey to set down a pot of hot water. He then threatened to shoot her, Massey ducked, briefly rose, and Grayson fired his pistol at her.
Authorities said Massey, 36, had called 911 earlier to report a suspected prowler. The video shows the two deputies responded just before 1 a.m. on July 6 at her home in Springfield, 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. They first walked around the house and found a black SUV with broken windows in the driveway.
It took Massey three minutes to open the door after the deputies knocked, and she immediately said, “Don’t hurt me.”
She seemed confused as they spoke at the door, and she repeated that she needed help, referenced God and told them she didn’t know who owned the car.
Inside the house, deputies seemed exasperated as she sat on her couch and went through her purse as they asked for identification to complete a report before leaving. Then Grayson pointed out a pot sitting on a flame on the stove.
“We don’t need a fire while we’re here,” he said.
In this image taken from body camera video released by Illinois State Police on Monday, July 22, 2024, former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson, left, points his gun at Sonya Massey, who called 911 for help, before shooting and killing her inside her home in Springfield, Ill., July 6, 2024. (Illinois State Police via AP)
Massey immediately got up and went to the stove, moving the pot near a sink. She and Grayson seemed to share a laugh over her pan of “steaming hot water” before she unexpectedly said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
“You better (expletive) not or I swear to God I’ll (expletive) shoot you in your (expletive) face.” He then pulled his 9mm pistol and demanded she drop the pot.
Massey said, “OK, I’m sorry.” In Grayson’s body camera footage, he pointed his weapon at her. She ducked and raised her hands.
Grayson was still in the living room, facing Massey and separated by a counter dividing the living room and kitchen. Prosecutors have said the separation allowed Grayson both “distance and relative cover” from Massey and the pot of hot water.
After Grayson shot her, Grayson discouraged his partner from grabbing a medical kit to save her.
“You can go get it, but that’s a headshot,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do, man.”
He added: “What else do we do? I’m not taking hot (expletive) boiling water to the (expletive) face”
Noting that Massey was still breathing, he relented and said he would get his kit, too. The other deputy said, “We can at least try to stop the bleeding.”
Grayson told responding police, “She had boiling water and came at me, with boiling water. She said she was going to rebuke me in the name of Jesus and came at me with boiling water.”
During a Monday afternoon news conference, the family’s lawyer, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, called Grayson’s “revisionist” justification “disingenuous.”
“She needed a helping hand. She did not need a bullet to her face,” Crump said of Massey.
Asked why Massey told Grayson, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” Crump said she had undergone treatment for mental health issues. He noted that she invoked God’s name from the beginning of the encounter and asked for her Bible after the deputies stepped inside.
During Massey’s funeral on Friday, Crump said the video, which he and the family had already viewed, would “shock the conscience of America.”
Massey’s father, James Wilburn, demanded the county court system be completely open with its investigation and prosecution and transparent with the public.
“The only time I will see my baby again is when I leave this world,” Wilburn said. “And I don’t ever want anybody else in the United States to join this league.”
Grayson, who was fired last week, is being held in the Sangamon County Jail without bond. If convicted, he faces prison sentences of 45 years to life for murder, 6 to 30 years for battery and 2 to 5 years for misconduct.
His lawyer, Daniel Fultz, declined to comment Monday.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for Massey’s family “as they face this unthinkable and senseless loss.”
“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,” Biden said. “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.”
Massey’s death is the latest example of Black people killed in recent years by police in their homes.
In May, a Hispanic Florida sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Roger Fortson, when the Air Force senior airman opened the door of his home in Fort Walton Beach armed with a handgun pointed down. The deputy, Eddie Duran, was fired.
In 2019, a white Fort Worth, Texas, officer fatally shot Atatiana Jefferson through a rear window of her home after responding to a nonemergency call reporting that Jefferson’s front door was open. Aaron Dean, the former officer, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.
In 2018, a white Dallas police officer fatally shot Botham Jean, who was unarmed, after mistaking his apartment for her own. Amber Guyger, the former officer, was convicted of murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Crump has represented families in each case as part of his effort to force accountability for the killings of Black people at the hands of police. Crump also has represented relatives of Earl Moore, a Springfield man who died after he was strapped face down on a stretcher in December 2022. Two emergency medical professionals face murder charges in that case.
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Article Summary
- The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Illinois for access to its complete, unredacted voter registration database.
- Documents filed in federal court suggest the agency wants the information so it can purge the names of suspected noncitizens using a federal database that many have criticized for being inaccurate.
- Similar suits have been filed in 29 other states and Washington, D.C. Judges in six states have granted motions to dismiss the suits. No judge has yet ruled in favor of DOJ’s request.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD — The Trump administration’s lawsuits seeking access to sensitive voter registration data in Illinois and dozens of other states is one part of a broader effort to purge state voter rolls of suspected noncitizens, according to documents filed recently in federal court in Springfield.
Those documents were filed Thursday, April 30, by attorneys representing the Illinois AFL-CIO and other groups that have intervened in the case seeking to prevent the Department of Justice from obtaining the information. They say it proves the agency’s stated reasons for seeking the data — to determine whether Illinois is complying with voter list maintenance requirements — is only a pretext and the agency’s suit against the state should be dismissed.
Read the filing
Several former DOJ attorneys who have worked in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division filed an amicus brief in the case in March, arguing the agency has no statutory authority to seek the information to conduct its own list maintenance program or to identify noncitizens.
The new documents filed Thursday include internal DOJ emails that the attorneys say were made available “in response to a public records request lawsuit.”
One of those was a June 16, 2025, email from Michael Gates, who was then a deputy assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, to his superior, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees that division. In that email, Gates states that the division is seeking access to the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.
“This will be helpful to us because it will allow us to compare this SAVE database against states’ voter rolls, which we will get directly from states under the (National Voter Registration Act),” Gates wrote.
The next month, on July 28, DOJ sent its first letter to the Illinois State Board of Elections seeking access to Illinois’ complete, unredacted statewide voter registration list, indicating that it was part of DOJ’s efforts to enforce voter list maintenance provisions of NVRA. The letter was signed by Gates. It also bore the name of Maureen Riordan, acting chief of the Voting Section within the Civil Rights Division.
Gates has since left the Justice Department. He is currently a Republican candidate for California attorney general in that state’s upcoming June 2 primary.
SAVE database
The SAVE database was originally set up to help states verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits such as Medicaid and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Some states also use it to verify people’s eligibility to vote.
But the program has also been the target of criticism because of its tendency to misidentify people as noncitizens due to its use of incomplete or inaccurate data.
On April 21, the watchdog groups Common Cause and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit against DOJ in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleging the agency wants to use state voter registration lists and the SAVE database to conduct what they call “a sprawling new voter surveillance and purging apparatus that endangers millions of Americans’ fundamental voting and privacy rights.”
A second document filed last week in the Illinois case is a Nov. 18, 2025, email from the acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section, Eric Neff, that appears to suggest how the agency should conceal its intentions when asked why it is seeking states’ voter registration databases.
“I believe our reply should always be: ‘We will use the data in a manner consistent with Federal law’ and say nothing more,” Neff wrote to fellow DOJ lawyers Jesus Osete and Matt Zandi. He also said of the Help America Vote Act, the Civil Rights Act and NVRA, “none of them require (us) to give the states information about what we are going to do with the data. No judge will have authority to limit us beyond a promise of Federal law compliance.”
Illinois lawsuit
Illinois has refused to hand over an unredacted voter registration list. Instead, it has provided DOJ with electronic copies of partially redacted files that do not include sensitive information such as dates of birth, driver’s license numbers or partial Social Security numbers.
In December, DOJ filed suit in the Central District of Illinois seeking access to the unredacted files. It also filed similar suits in 29 other states and Washington, D.C.
The Illinois AFL-CIO, Common Cause several and other groups have intervened as codefendants in the case.
Attorneys for the state and the intervening parties have filed motions to dismiss the DOJ lawsuit. Judge Colleen Lawless has not yet ruled on the motion. Similar suits have already been dismissed in six other states. No court has yet ruled in favor of DOJ’s request for access to the unredacted voter files.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
A man is dead following a May 4 collision on westbound Interstate 64 west of Corydon, Indiana, according to a news release from the Indiana State Police.
ISP Sgt. Carey Huls said the two-vehicle crash occurred around 5:45 a.m. when Zachary Burdin, 31, was traveling westbound on I-64, and his vehicle collided with the back of a truck with a trailer full of paving equipment.
Burdin was pronounced dead at the scene by the Harrison County Coroner. There were no other injuries reported. Officials do not attribute the crash to any weather conditions.
Huls said the crash was cleared from the highway by about 9 a.m., and there are no current issues.
DES MOINES, Iowa (KCRG) – Iowa gas prices have topped $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022, averaging $4.11 a gallon.
According to GasBuddy, prices jumped 15 cents from Sunday night to Monday, up from $3.84 on Wednesday. Prices have risen 61 cents in the past month.
Iowa gas prices are $1.18 higher than a year ago. The highest recorded average in Iowa was $4.77 per gallon in June 2022.
Nationally, Georgia has the lowest average gas price at $3.85 per gallon, while California has the highest at $6.08.
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