PEORIA — The cousin of a Springfield-area woman shot by an ex-cop accused of her murder said Friday he was devastated to learn his relative could have survived her gunshot wounds had first aid been administered sooner.
Former Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson is facing three counts of first-degree murder for killing Sonya Massey, an unarmed Black woman, in her kitchen after she had called police to report a prowler.
On Thursday, a forensics expert testifying on behalf of the prosecution said one of three bullets Grayson fired hit Massey in her eye but didn’t touch her brain.
Dr. Nathaniel Patterson said the bullet instead severed her carotid artery. Patterson, who performed the autopsy on Massey, testified she could have survived if someone on the scene had controlled her bleeding quickly.
Massey’s cousin Sontae Massey said that realization is painful.
“Knowing that my cousin could be here right now, it’s just devastating. I mean, not only to me, obviously, but to my entire family. We want Sonya to be still here,” Massey told reporters after court adjourned Friday. “I still think about Sonya every day and want to call her every day. That could have happened if [the responding officers] just did their jobs.”
Body-worn camera footage from Grayson, as well as the other deputy who was on the scene, shows Grayson initially discouraging his partner from retrieving a medical kit from his car right after Massey was shot.
“Nah, it’s a head shot, dude, she’s done,” Grayson said on the footage.
Friday marked the end of the first week of a murder trial in a case that has drawn national attention for its racial dynamics. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has worked with the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, helped the Massey family secure a $10 million settlement with Sangamon County. He’s expected to attend the trial next week.
Grayson, who is white, contends he shot Massey in self-defense. His defense team argues Massey was a threat for not following “firm and unequivocal” orders to put down a pot of boiling water.
Earlier in the week, jurors saw the harrowing footage of that fatal interaction from Grayson and his partner’s body cameras.
During the 36-minute long video, Grayson can be seen yelling profanities at Massey and threatening to shoot her in her face before firing his weapon at her three times. Massey then falls to her kitchen floor as blood pools around her.
When the jury watched the video, some jurors recoiled in their chairs. One sobbed and held up her notebook to block her line of vision of the courtroom’s video screen. The jury’s only Black member bowed his head at the floor after seeing the gunshots and did not watch the rest of the video.
Meanwhile, Grayson — who had appeared relaxed during the trial — had his head lowered and was fidgeting in his seat.
The version police had previously made public blurred out Massey’s body as she lay dying. But the footage shown in court displayed the entire scene in all of its grisly detail, prompting Sontae Massey and Massey’s mother, Donna Massey, to leave the courtroom in tears.
“We have to relive this every day,” Sontae Massey said Friday. “We have been reliving this for a whole year and six months.”