One of the last things Sonya Massey said before she was killed was, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
In the days leading up to her tragic death, Sonya Massey had been experiencing premonitions of her own demise. She repeatedly expressed to her family her belief that she was in danger of being killed. The fatal event occurred on July 6 when a local sheriff's deputy, who she had feared, shot her in the face inside her own kitchen.
Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman from Illinois, dialed 911 as she thought an intruder was inside her home. When two deputies responded and entered her residence, one of them, identified as Sean Grayson, aggressively confronted her while she was holding a pot of boiling water. Despite her attempts to seek safety and protection behind a counter and apologize, Grayson shot her at close range.
Massey's family disclosed that she had voluntarily checked into an inpatient program in St. Louis a week prior to her death, but inexplicably returned after just two days.
It's clear that she was in distress. She needed help. Instead, she was killed. Once again, we ask ourselves how this happens.
In the wake of so many of these incidents, the worst part is seeing the wreckage of family members struggling with the loss. Sonya had a daughter and son, Jeanette and Malachi.
This type of destruction has occurred so frequently, affecting numerous families, that it has become a recurring theme of Black life in this nation, a lasting wound, a lingering sorrow, a pervasive fear.
Despite this, America has failed to pass significant federal legislation to tackle the issue.
If it had been enacted, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was put on hold in the Senate in 2021, might have potentially saved Sonya Massey's life. One of its components, as outlined on the website of the House Judiciary Committee's Democrats, aimed to establish "a national registry of police misconduct to prevent problematic officers who are dismissed or transfer from one agency from moving to another jurisdiction without facing consequences."
Had this been enacted, we would know that Officer Grayson had worked at six different law enforcement agencies in the last four years and was charged with two D.U.I. misdemeanors, one in 2015 and the other in 2016.
He has since been fired and charged with three counts of aggravated murder, one count of aggravated battery with a firearm and one count of official misconduct.
This is a great first step, but we know how this can quickly turn the wrong way. It also doesn’t solve the glaring, underlying problem. We see far too many of these situations is the manifestation of a societal sickness that fundamentally devalues Black life.
As this problem persists, it indicates that as a society we still accept the assignment of value - and threat - based on race, which will hinder people's innate empathetic responses and present a significant risk to the lives of Black women from law enforcement.
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