[Photo: Trevor Hughes/USA Today Network]
Sonya Massey’s family and Sangamon County agree to a $10 million settlement over her fatal shooting on July 6th, 2024. Massey was 36 years old and was shot and killed in her home in Springfield, Illinois by former Deputy Sean Grayson. Massey originally called 911 after she suspected someone walking around her backyard. Two Sangamon County deputies responded to the incident, but the other one is unnamed. After not finding anyone around Massey’s house, the two officers entered her home, eventually asking Massey to turn off a pot of boiling water from the stove because they didn’t want a fire while they were there. After a few moments of back-and-forth conversation, Massey told Deputy Grayson “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” Grayson shot her three times in the head and face.
After the shooting, Grayson was fired from his job, he had worked in multiple Illinois police stations in the span of four years. He was charged with first degree murder, and a lawsuit was filed by Massey’s family. In February 2025, Sangamon County agreed to pay Massey’s family $10 million to settle the case. Studies show that Black Americans are killed by police at a much higher rate than White Americans. Between 2015 and 2024, for every one million Black person in the U.S., about six were shot and killed by police. For White people, that number was about two per million. A report from Johns Hopkins University and Vanderbilt University found that between 2015 and 2020, police shot more than 1,700 people every year. More than half of those shootings ended in death. Other studies have shown that Black people are more likely to be unarmed when they are shot by police compared to White people.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office have agreed to implement changes in officer training following the death of Massey. The changes will include de-escalation techniques when someone is experiencing a crisis and possibly sending mental health professionals with the officers in crisis situations. According to Capitol News Illinois, the agreement between Sangamon County and the DOJ specifies that deputies and dispatchers will be trained on nondiscriminatory policing, de-escalation tactics, and proper ways to handle behavioral crises. The county says it will partner with its local health organizations to create a mobile crisis response team. The team will be responsible for responding to crises using the new tools learned instead of traditional police intervention methods.
