Sonya Massey should be alive today
July 6th was a sad and despicable day for our county. A person who was entrusted to look out for our community willfully and shamefully decided to take the life of Sonya Massey, who only asked for his help. After watching the body cam video from his fellow deputy, I was horrified that such an incident could take place here. It is a most heinous betrayal of the public trust and we, on the county board, should work to ensure such a crime never happens again.
To that end, once elected, I will fully support the decision of remedies upon the Sheriff’s department that is agreed upon by Sonya Massey’s family and our court system. Our State’s Attorney, John Milheiser, has charged the former deputy with three counts of murder and he remains in Sangamon County Jail without bail. The Justice Department has opened their own investigation into how our deputies are evaluated prior to hire and how they are trained. Attorney Milheiser is well acquainted with the US Justice Department having served there prior to taking the State’s Attorney role here in Sangamon County. I would trust that they can evaluate and proscribe the proper remedies.
I believe that we have good men and women in law enforcement. For example, the prosecution’s star witness in this case will be a Sheriff’s Deputy. He rendered aid to Sonya after she was shot even when the murderer said he didn’t need to. He kept his body camera on and recorded the aftermath. He is responsible for providing the nearest truth about what happened that night. Sonya’s murderer turned off his body camera in an attempt to cover up the crime and refused to assist any life saving measures. There have been allegations that both deputies lied about how Sonya was shot. I don’t know what to believe but I want to believe that someone who would render aid to a dying woman would never lie about the cause. We need to be fair to the deputy who treated Sonya with respect and our court system is the best way to find this out.
Sheriff departments should be held to very high standards and we ask a lot of our deputies. Their job is to deal with people on their worst days be it injured in a traffic accident, evicted from their home, or being arrested for a crime. They need to treat those people, US, with respect and a modicum of kindness. Sonya was denied that. We can and will do better. That’s only a beginning of how we can #standwithsonya.
Posted on 23 Jul 2024, 19:08 - Category: Justice for Sonya Massey