Illinois sheriff breaks silence over Sonya Massey shooting, admits his department ‘failed’

A little more than three weeks after a white deputy sheriff in Illinois fatally shot Sonya Massey, a mentally ill, unarmed, 36-year-old Black woman, the county’s top cop put into words what many in the community have been thinking.

“We failed,” Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell said at a Monday night listening session organized by the Department of Justice. “We did not do our jobs. We failed Sonya. We failed Sonya’s family and friends.”

The gathering, which drew more than 500 people to the Union Baptist Church in Springfield, Illinois, where Massey lived, was run by the DOJ’s Community Relations Service, a unit that describes itself as “America’s Peacemaker for communities facing conflict based on actual or perceived race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or disability.”

Campbell apologized on behalf of his agency, telling the attendees, “I am sorry. She called for help, and we failed her. That’s all she did. That’s all. She was calling for help.”

Former Dep. Sean Grayson, who was fired and charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm, and official misconduct in the aftermath of the senseless shooting.

“We will never know why he did what he did,” Campbell said.

Massey called 911 shortly before 1 a.m. on July 6, and requested police check out “banging” sounds she thought might be a prowler outside. A half-hour later, following a chaotic interaction with Grayson over a pot of water he told her to take off the stove, the deputy opened fire on Massey. Grayson at first tried to dissuade his partner from rendering aid to the mortally wounded mother of two; she was pronounced dead a short time later at a nearby hospital.

The deadly encounter was captured on Grayson’s partner’s body camera; Grayson’s bodycam was not activated until after the shooting, authorities said.

During his two minutes of allotted speaking time on Monday, Campbell asked for forgiveness from those gathered, and specifically from Massey’s mother, saying, “I offer up no excuses.”

He rejected calls for him to step down as Sangamon sheriff, a refrain that has recently gained traction among local residents, according to The State Journal-Register.

“I will not abandon the sheriff’s office at this most critical moment,” Campbell insisted. “That would solve nothing.”

In addition to Campbell, the two-hour “community healing and listening session” included members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois, the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Springfield Mayor’s Office, various Springfield City Council members and local civil rights leaders.

Grayson, 30, was hired by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office in May 2023, lasting just over a year before being arrested and bounced off the force. He was given a gun and a badge despite having worked for six different law enforcement agencies in the past four years, two DUI convictions and getting booted from the U.S. Army for what his discharge papers termed “serious misconduct.”

Audio recordings obtained by ABC News from Grayson’s 11-month stint at the Logan County, Illinois, sheriff’s office appear to reveal sloppy police work along with a discipline problem.

“We had this conversation,” one of Grayson’s supervisors can be heard saying to him. “I told you in that meeting — review all your reports, make sure they’re right.”

Another tells Grayson, “The sheriff and I will not tolerate lying or deception. I have zero tolerance for stretching the law. Because when you have officers that stretch the law, they will get caught, they will get prosecuted, and they will handcuff the rest of law enforcement.”

Grayson also received a complaint from a female arrestee, who said he tried to watch her being strip-searched, according to the ABC News report. Still, it says, Grayson left the department in “good standing,” and was hired by the Sangamon Sheriff’s Office a few days later.

As Grayson remains detained without bail, the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police has petitioned for him to be reinstated for being “terminated without just cause.”

Grayson has pleaded not guilty.