SPRINGFIELD, Illinois — Two emergency calls were placed from the home of Sonya Massey, the black woman who shot in the face by an Illinois sheriff’s deputy after she called 911 for help in the days leading up to her death, according to documents released Wednesday.
In a third call, Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, reports that her daughter is suffering from a “mental breakdown” and tells the operator, “I don’t want you to hurt her.” She adds that she is afraid of the police and asks that no officer be sent who is “biased.”
In the other conversations, a woman who wants to remain anonymous calls from Sonya Massey’s address. She says people want to hurt her. A day later, a woman who calls herself Sonya Massey reports that a neighbor hit her with a brick.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department is still trying to determine whether Massey’s mental health issues were reported to officers who responded to the call about a suspected burglar that led to her death on July 6.
Bodycam video released last week suggests that was not the case. Two minutes after former deputy sheriff Sean Grayson When he shoots Massey with a 9mm bullet, he hears the dispatcher asking if there are any reports of calls from Massey indicating that she has mental health problems.
Such information is passed on if it is known, but there is no built-in mechanism to guarantee this, said Jeff Wilhite, spokesman for Sheriff Jack Campbell.
“It’s possible, if the dispatcher knew the calls were linked, but it’s not automatic,” Wilhite said. “The dispatcher would have to know ‘yes, it’s the same person’ and ‘yes, it’s the same address.'”
Grayson, 30is accused of first degree murderaggravated assault with a firearm and official misconduct in the shooting death of Massey, 36, in her home. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail.
Body camera footage shows that after checking the yards around the home just before 1 a.m. on July 6, Massey greeted officers at the front door with, “Don’t hurt me,” appeared confused and repeated, “Please, God.” Inside her home on the southeast side of Springfield, she struggled to find her ID and asked for her Bible.
When Grayson was ordered to get a pot of water from the stove, she unexpectedly said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” Grayson then pulled out his gun and yelled at her to drop the presumably hot water before firing three times, hitting her below her left eye.
Family members have said Massey has struggled with mental health issues and has undergone treatment. Her son, Malachi Hill Massey, said last week that his mother sent him and his sister to stay with their fathers the first week of July because she had signed herself up for a 30-day clinical treatment program in the St. Louis regionand returned two days later.
On July 4 at 9:27 p.m., a 911 caller from Massey’s address said, “Somebody’s trying to hurt me.” When the dispatcher asked who, she said, “A lot.” When asked for more information, she said, “Never mind. This can’t be the right number,” and hung up. When she called back, she said she didn’t need the police anymore. Wilhite said authorities don’t know if it was Massey who called.
The next morning, at 9:07 a.m., Donna Massey called to say her daughter was outside the house, screaming. She said Sonya Massey is not a danger to anyone, but “when she gets angry, she thinks everyone is after her, like a paranoid schizophrenic.”
She told the dispatcher that she was afraid of the police and that she didn’t want her daughter to get hurt.
“Please don’t send belligerent police officers who are biased,” said Donna Massey.
Springfield police, who answered the call, reported that Massey did not want to speak to medical personnel but was checked by paramedics, who gave her clearance.
Sonya Massey called a few hours later to report that a neighbor had hit her with a brick. A deputy caught up with her at HSHS St. John’s Hospital, where she was going “to seek treatment for her mental health,” according to the dispatch report. She told the deputy that the neighbor had used a brick to break the window of her SUV and that she had broken another window “in an attempt to get into the car to get away.”
The deputy noted that Massey “appeared to be in some 10-96 trouble,” police code for mental health issues, and that she was seeking treatment for abrasions she sustained while reaching through the broken glass. She told the deputy that she had recently been released from a mental health facility in Granite City, 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis, and claimed that earlier that day she had been “out with” police “who tried to run her off the road.”
The agent said Massey also had documents from a July 3 interaction with a mobile mental health crisis unit from another Springfield hospital.
Twelve hours later, when Grayson and the second officer responded to the July 6 call and searched her yard, they saw on body camera footage that the SUV’s windows were broken. They asked Massey if it was her car, which Massey denied.
“Did someone just park it in your driveway?” Grayson asks.
“They brought it to my driveway,” Massey replies.
Grayson asks if she’s “mentally okay,” and Massey says, “Yeah, I’ve been taking my meds.”
Minutes after the shooting, as he grabs his first aid kit, Grayson radios in to ask, “Did we ever call her as 10-96?”
The answer is not forthcoming, but after a moment Grayson says, “That would explain a lot.”
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This story has been updated to clarify that Sonya Massey called once and that another call came from her address, but the woman who called did not identify herself.