Crime Weekly - S3 Ep229: Crime Weekly News: Breaking Down the Sonya Massey Shooting

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

This week we're taking a look at a major story in the headlines - The shooting of Sonya Massey by Sean Grayson, an Illinois police officer. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod 

Hey everyone, welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And we're going to talk about a case that's in the headlines right now, and that's Sonia Massey, the shooting of Sonia Massey. And we're going to talk about it in that's in the headlines right now. That's Sonia Massey, the shooting of Sonia Massey. And we're going to talk about it in a couple of different ways because sometimes we wait until all the information comes out, but I think we have enough at this point to discuss it. There's a couple of different videos that are associated with this case. One is from the officer who shot Sonia. And then there's been a more recent video that was released of an officer who had his body cam footage on the entire time.

During the interaction, which is extremely important to kind of come up to your own conclusion here. It's important for context. For sure. I've seen Grayson's video. I have not seen the other deputy's video footage, which I think is extremely important. So we're actually going to watch it together with you guys, all the footage for anybody who hasn't seen it. And I'm also going to discuss my own police involved shooting for anybody who doesn't know I was involved in a shooting early on in my career as a patrolman. So I do think I have some perspective on this that not many people in the world have. And I think I'm definitely qualified to weigh in on this because, again, I've been through it. So we're going to watch the videos. Before we do that, for anyone who doesn't know about this case, Stephanie, fill us in on some of the details. Well, this happened on July 6th in Sagamore County, Illinois, Springfield,

Illinois, to be specific. Apparently, a woman, 36- 36 year old Sonia Massey she called the police and we don't know exactly what she called the police for apparently for an intruder apparently for a possible intruder that's what we've learned she called them for help as you do for the police for correct she's nobody called on her yeah yes nobody called on her that's what's important to know at this point the police arrive uh They're kind of speaking to her calmly outside her house for a little bit. They go inside. Sonia's got a pot of boiling water on the stove or something's boiling on the stove. The police officer sort of step back. You can see this in the body camera. And she asks at one point, what are you doing? Where are you going?

And the officer in question, whose name is Sean Grayson, he says, oh, I'm getting away from the boiling water. Ha ha. And then literally just the situation devolves in moments. It's very hard to understand what this police officer was thinking in this moment. So what I need to tell you is that Sonia Massey ended up getting shot in the head. Obviously, she did not survive. And let's watch the video and then we will talk about it. There's a bike sitting back there. Where? On the back door.

I don't know if it's hers. I'd love to have it. So, which one are we on? You want to try and call her 17 back here and let her know we're out front. 17 is her phone. or foam. I hear a phone ringing. I think I'm at the upper door. You didn't see anybody out walking that way with you? No, not when I came in. I didn't see anybody that way either. I hear a phone ringing and she's refusing to come to the door so we're about to go to the maid.

There's a bed in there. Oh, it's open. Is this a ring doorbell? Yeah, it hasn't worked out. Oh, it's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell.

It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. It's a doorbell. So she called the police, but she's not answering the door right away. Yep. Sheriff's office. Two houses down, I think. Oh, no, it's right here.

So that's Sonia we can hear from inside, right? I think so. I think so. Go ahead. think so as you are school you come to the door or not? Alright, hurry one you called. I'm having you down here and I need you down here. Please don't hurt me. Oh, and I need to go in there.

Please, God, help me, God. Oh, we heard you. You called us. Okay. Please. So what did you hear? Somebody outside my house. Please, God, please.

Is this your car over here? Please, God, please, God, please. Is this your car over here? Uh-uh. Oh. Please, God. That's not your black car in the driveway? Uh-uh.

Oh. Well, we checked your yard. We walked around the whole block. We didn't see anybody. Uh-uh. Right? well, we checked your yard. We walked around the whole block. We didn't see anybody. Mm-mm. Right? You know, we don't...

We checked the whole area. There's nobody out walking around. I know, y'all. Please, God. Please, God. I'm trying to get help, y'all, but... What do you need help with? Nothing.

I just... Please, God. Please, God. Please. I don't know what to do. Do what? Huh? What do you need help with?

Nothing. I just wanted to see if I could help you. What do you want help with? Huh? What do you need help with? Nothing. I just wanted to see if I could help you. What do you want help with? Huh? What do you want help with? Huh? I heard somebody outside.

Yeah, we checked your house. We checked your backyard. I walked all the way through all these backyards. We checked your front yard. We didn't see nobody. Yeah, nobody's out here. You didn't see anybody? Nope.

Nope. No. We checked the whole area. Okay. What took you so long to answer the door? Oh, I was trying to put on some clothes, sir. I'm sorry. I was trying to get...

I got you. All right. Is there anything else we can do for you? No. Is there anything else I can do for you? No, sir. Okay. Okay.

All right. You doing all right mentally? Yes. Sure? My medicine stuff. All right. Okay. I love y'all. Thank My medicine stuff. All right. Okay. I love y'all.

Thank y'all. All right. That's not your black car, though. So the officer talking to her right now is Sean Grayson. Oh, yeah. Correct? Yeah, for sure. And I think we can admit, even before anything happens, he's a little bit of a dick.

He's definitely not being polite, for sure. It seems like he's like, you're kind of annoying me. Like, I don't even know why I'm here. Like, I don't even want to do my job kind of thing. So if any of this comes off as defense, it's not. So he's not being polite. He's not being very respectful. He's definitely not, I guess the word would be like,

he doesn't have like bedside manners. You know, he's not being, he's not coming with a positive attitude. He doesn't seem like a public servant. Some might say. I don't necessarily I don't agree with it. You can tell he's irritated. You can tell he's he's annoyed that he's there because clearly he's already come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong. So right here in this moment, what I'd be thinking is someone called us for an intruder. Okay. Now you, to me automatically, you can already tell there's

something going on with Sonia. She's not a hundred percent in the right state of mind. So they can see that they could see that she's doing something, whether she's stressed or there's something deeper going on, which it seems like we're about to get into as far as what he's asking. But what my concern here is just going step by step if I'm the officer, is we got called here for an intruder. The caller just took a long time to get to the door. So now I'm wondering if there's somebody already inside the apartment. Is the intruder inside telling her to tell us that everything's fine? Yeah. And maybe that's why she's acting weird yeah yeah is she acting weird but she's on her phone so it doesn't seem like i wouldn't come to that conclusion based on what i've seen so far where she's not she's on her phone she doesn't seem she seems like she's trying to get back inside which would be the opposite of

what you would try to do if you had someone in there that you didn't want to be with but still or maybe the person's texting her saying like, you better get away from that door. Like I have your kid hostage or whatever. Like, you know, you never know. So that's why you can tell they're asking a lot of questions. He's going right before you said pause. He's going back to this car. He's going back to this car because he's saying, you're telling me it's not your car.

And yet you're fine and nobody's here. But you called us because something wasn't fine so he's driving the car home a little bit more because something's not adding up here and i think at this point he's trying to figure out whether it's just there's nothing going on it's just she's having a bad night or is there something more here that he has to dig a little deeper for but yes to answer your question more directly or your comment, I should say, he's not being very polite. He's not being very respectful where situations like this, this is how things go bad because you call the cops and clearly she's going through something.

And if it were another person who wasn't going through something, having someone, an officer speak to you like this can automatically make a stressful situation worse where as an adult, you don't want to be spoken to like this. I'll give you a quick example. I got pulled over two weeks ago. Not going to say the police department because I'm sure some of them watch this video. Local police department. I'm with my daughters. He says I was speeding and I'll be honest with you. I was not going to speed limit. It was probably five, 10 miles over. He comes up to the car and says I was going like 30 miles over. And I know that wasn't true. I'm telling you guys right now it wasn't true. He said he got me on radar going the opposite direction on a turn. I know that's not even possible what he was saying.

So I politely say to him because my kids are in the car. You didn't all do respect. You didn't get me going 30 over. If you want to write me a ticket, you can. I'm definitely going to fight it, sir. But I respect what you're doing, but I know you didn't get me on radar going 30 over. He knows he didn't get me on radar going 30 over. And I tell him, I'm a former police officer. I'm not trying to cause any problems, but I know how the radar works. Radar, laser, it's different. You didn't get me on radar going 30 over when there's a car in front of me, a car behind me going the same speeds. He goes back to his car. He's gone for about 15, 20 minutes. Takes a long time. Finally, he comes back and we're still very amicable, but he years younger than me. And I could tell he's brand new. And he comes up to the car and he goes, I'm going to give you a break, but you know, you got these kids in the car, you got to, you got to make better decisions. And I stopped him right there. I said, sir, all due respect.

You're not giving me a ticket. I don't need you parenting me. Am I free to go? My kids are in the car. Like I said, I respect what you do, not trying to cause a problem, but I don't need the advice. Oh, what's the issue? What's the issue? No issue. Just don't need the advice. Are we good? We're good. Give my ID back. Have a good day. So I bring that up because here's a situation where adults who are interacting with law enforcement do not want to be spoken to like that and shouldn't be spoken to like that. So completely agree with you. As you said, talking like a dick. Like as a woman, if I am afraid of something, even if it's like maybe just in my head, maybe I heard something outside and now I'm afraid and I live by myself and the cops come and they kind of act like this, like I'm an annoyance, like I'm a burden

and inconvenience. Now I'm going to feel like not not heard and i'm also not maybe gonna push the issue and be like when i definitely heard someone outside like can you guys check can you guys just hang out for i'm not gonna do that because i feel like i'm a burden and you know we we don't want to feel like that we're gonna feel like we're bothering someone like we're putting a kink in their night and and we're just gonna be like yeah yeah we're good we're good you guys can leave when in general or in in in reality we definitely still scared, but we don't want to feel like we're bothering people. So yeah, it's not the greatest way to handle this. And just to add a little bit more to this, Grayson has been, from what we're seeing,

and I've seen different stories, he's been with five or six different departments. Yes, yes, yes. I did see that. And he's actually had two DUIs. One was when he was in the military, but the DUIs were obviously concerning. But what's even more concerning is he was on five different police departments at least before this. And the question becomes, and I'm sure we'll find out why, why has he been on five different police departments? That is not common. A lot of guys will laterally go from one department to another after they've done their 20 years, but never five or six departments. That's unheard of in my world.

So I start to wonder now if this attitude, if this approach could be part of that. So we'll continue the video. Any further things you want to add? I also want to point out in these clips, you can see Sonia standing next to Grayson. This guy's a beast. He's a big dude. He's huge. He's tall.

He's a big guy, yeah. He's wide. His arm is the size of her head. She's tiny, maybe 115 pounds. What's the first thing she said to him? Please don't hurt me. Yeah, yeah. Literally the first words out of her mouth.

He's enormous. He looks like a giant standing next to her. Yeah, he's a big guy. And when we look at what he was alleging to be afraid of or when he pulled the trigger, you didn't do that because you weren't afraid. You're going to allege you were afraid. You felt you were in danger. And you're looking at the person you're standing across from who you claim you're afraid of

and you got 200 pounds on her and a foot and a half. I'm going to question if you were actually afraid or not. Okay. And that's a good point. And that kind of goes back to my shooting, but I'll save it. I'll save it for when we get there. As far as what variables are being considered in that moment when you're deciding whether or not to use lethal force. All right. You ready to hit play i am you don't know if someone just parked it in your driveway yes still asking about the car and just left it yeah let's run that yeah so see he says let's run that they're gonna run the registration because something's not adding up they they know

something's not making sense here this could be the intruder's vehicle. So this is good. I'm glad they're not just saying, hey, let's just walk away, we're done, which some officers would do. And while we're waiting on this, running this... Is that gunshots? Gunshots or fireworks. Oh, yeah. It was July 6th.

Yeah. All right. So now he's going inside. I don't know why that happened. We missed that part. I don't think anything happened. I think he just decided to go inside. Well, she's walking inside.

I don't know if she's showing him something. They're checking. Good, this is good. Hello? Yeah, I've got the sheriff's department here, but I was calling for help from y'all. They're here in my house right now. Okay.

I'm going to let you go and you can talk to them. No, hold on. She's talking to someone on speaker. You're going to hang up on us, yeah. For what?

You're there with the deputies, correct? No, hold on, okay? You're going to hang up. Hold on for what? One second, okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. What's up? I got some paperwork. Can you grab that bible please? Yeah. Hey, I just need your name so we can get out of here.

Was there any damage previous to your car? Previous? Yeah, it was. What was the damage? A dent, I believe. What about windows? Oh, that was something that happened earlier. Okay.

So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? No. Okay. So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? No. Okay. So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? No.

Okay. So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? No. Okay. So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? No. Okay. So, you're not going to be able to get out of here? car? Previous, yeah. What was the damage? A dent, I believe. What about windows? It was something that happened earlier. Okay, perfect. What is your last name?

Should not think about your last name. You're not in trouble. Massey. You have an ID? That makes things so much easier. So have we concluded that the black car is hers? Do you have an ID? That would make things so much easier. So have we concluded that the black car is hers? I didn't get any registration data back. I didn't hear it. But he's asking her, do you have any damage to your car? It could be her car. He's asking her about damage to it.

You have your ID for me. Your ID. One task at a time. So let's do an ID, and then you can dig around for your paperwork. I don't know where my ID is. You can stand that stack right there, maybe. One second. He's already kind of acting like paranoid. He is. Pause this real quick. Pause it. At this point, I think the paranoia is warranted.

I feel like, objectively speaking, something's off here with her. I don't know if it's her fear of the officers. I don't know if it's a fear of someone else who's in the apartment right now that we're unaware of. I don't know if she's having going through some type of mental health issue at this point. They, they, but they can clearly tell something is wrong. They just don't know what yet. And if you noticed right before we paused it, he pointed to the officer to check the back. He, uh, he, he gestured to go back there and look, they're concerned right now. They're definitely nervous that someone's going to pop out on them. And they don't have- They don't feel like this is a standard sort of thing that-

No. I have, knowing even what happens, I've been in these situations where you walk in and you're at a disadvantage right now. You don't know the layout of the house. You don't know who's there. They know, they can see and hear you if there's someone else there. So they're definitely concerned right now. They don't know what's going on, but you can tell that they're a little defensive and they're nervous.

And I have no issue with it at this point. Something is definitely off and they're trying to figure out what that is. I think it's a little odd though, because I've had police officers to my house. And one of the first questions they ask is, who else lives here? Is there anyone else here right now? I have not heard them ask her that. If they're concerned about somebody else being in the house, you'd think that would be a question that they would ask.

Yeah, I mean, that is a question they could ask. But at minimum, you would think that if someone else lived there, they would come out and also greet the police officers and not sit in the back room. But yes, that's a question you could ask. I know if police officers were in my home and my friend or significant other called the police, I would be out there with her to make sure she's okay. I mean, you don't know if there's people sleeping, it's night, like you don't know. It should be asked. Yeah. It should be asked. But either way, the concerns of the officers at this point, in my opinion, warranted. There's definitely something here. I would be concerned about who else is in the apartment at this point, in my opinion, warranted. There's definitely something here.

I would be concerned about who else is in the apartment. And yes, the simple question would be, is anybody else here? But if someone else is there and they're not supposed to be, even if they say, no, no one else is here, you still don't know. Someone could pop out from a room. They have a gun that close of a range. You're dead. You're done. So again, I don't know where this is going to go

from here, but at this point, it seems like I didn't like how he was acting in the first part. I feel like he's coming back a little bit. He's asking politely. He's being a little, what's the word I'm looking, pushing. He's pushy a little bit, but it also seems like he's trying to get the information, trying to get out of there as fast as possible because he can tell she's uncomfortable with him for sure. And part of what you said, he's trying to get the information, trying to get out of there as fast as possible because he can tell she's uncomfortable with him, for sure. And part of what you said, he's a monster. Look, his head's almost touching the ceiling. Yeah.

He's huge. All right. Huge. Good to keep going? We don't need a fire while we're here. All right. All right. So the other officer noticed that the pot's boiling when he walked over there.

Hey. What are you doing? Huh? What are you doing? I'm going to wade through your hot steam and water. You're going to wade through my hot steam and water? Yeah. pots boiling when he walked over there all right all right whoa and like i said in the in you know the introduction it it really just went downhill in a moment. Damn. Yeah, it did. I think she's clearly being humorous. I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. And he, I don't know, he got triggered, man. Triggered. He's like, what? You better not. Yeah.

She said, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. I think it's just a. No, but she's just being funny. She's picking up the pot. She's like leaning in. Cause he's, well, I don't, but either way, he's like, you better F and not, I swear to God, I'll shoot you in the effing hat. That's unnecessary. Didn't need to happen. So that's the problem. Clearly there's anger issues here. Clearly he goes from zero to 100. There was no like pass go, no collect two hundred dollars. It was literally just like, I'm fine to I'm about to shoot you in the head. And this is unacceptable.

So my take on it is this is a situation I'm going to go through. It might sound contradictory at points. I don't like what she's doing here. She picks up the pot of water. She's facing it toward him. He's in close proximity to her. So it's a threat. It's a danger at that point, because if you get boiling water thrown on you from that close of a range, it could severely injure you. However, we know now from watching the full video, they're on the first floor. The exit is right behind them, right? The door is like six feet away. And he's not standing directly in front of her either he's at least seven ten feet away i mean she's got more than close enough to throw a pot of boiling water on her so you have two options here one is the right one one is the

wrong one you can say hey i'm gonna shoot you in the fucking face and pull your gun out that's the wrong option or at this point you can because she's not a threat to anybody else other than herself you can step back. You can move yourself from the situation. The door is right behind you. You've already established that there's no one else in the apartment at this point. She's just there alone. You're not there to protect anyone else.

You could easily back up and get out of that apartment. And now you're out of range of the pot of water. This is not a gun that she has in her hand. So you can easily turn around, back out of this situation, and avoid being scalded by water. And also avoid having to escalate the situation by taking out your gun and saying, I'm going to shoot you in the fucking face. Because that is not going to make the situation better. So I agree that at this point, it's concerning that it seems like they were joking about backing up because the boiling water, she says, I'm going to rebuke you in the name of Jesus. You say she's doing it again. This is all

subjective, by the way, you're entitled to your opinion. I'm not disagreeing. I took it as this whole conversation so far, this whole interaction mentally, there's something going on here. That's my opinion. I'm not a professional, but it doesn't seem like a normal encounter. So when she says, I'm going to rebuke you in the name of Jesus, I didn't take that as humor. You say you did, which is interesting. So there you go. Two different perspectives right there. But either way, regardless of whether it was humor or a verbal threat, you could remove yourself. It wasn't even like necessarily humor, but just like an offhand statement, not like I'm actually gonna throw this boiling water

in your face, but either way, like you said, he didn't have to do that. He could have backed- Escalate or deescalate? Yeah, exactly. He could have backed up real quick, stood in the doorway and then said, ma'am, I feel threatened right now.

Can you please put that down before we continue talking anymore? And by the way, if he backs up towards the door, he's now out of range. So that pot of water that was a threat when he's close is no longer a threat. Done. It's just like any self-defense trial and case we've ever seen. If you have the ability and the means to retreat, it's not self-defense. Yep. And that's, and that's, we're going to talk about my shooting after this, because this is actually a really good example when you compare it to my shooting, because the weapon does matter. The weapon that the offender has is extremely relevant to the decision-making process. Okay. Let's finish the video. And now

it's going to get a little. Yeah, we should give a warning, right? Yeah. From here, it's going to get a little triggering we should give a warning right yeah from here it's going to get a little triggering and then i believe we're going to see some of the same things from the viewpoint of of deputy grayson which i'm so glad because i'm so glad because we can also see maybe more of her and his perspective what was her facial expression was the pot actually aimed towards him etc no this is good. And a quick, just a thing for police activity is the YouTube page that we're using this video from just to give them credit. They've compiled both videos. So police activity is the one that we're using for this footage.

So shout out to them. Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Drop the fucking pot! Shots fired! Shots fired! Drop the fucking pot! Bring him to us now, we got a headshot wounded a female.

Headshot wounded a female, 10-78. Fuck. Couldn't see a lot because he got in front of the camera. So we'll have to wait for his angle. I'm going to go get my kit. I wish he had a... You can go get it, but that's a headshot. Fuck. God damn it.

God, fuck. Dude, I'm not saying it's fucking boring. I don't know what I'm talking about. Hey, look. It fucking came right to our feet, too. That's stupid. God damn it. That's stupid.

That's dumb. He's immediately going into defense mode. He knows he fucked up. You good? Let her fucking just... God. Is that what you do, man? Fuck.

That was plenty you could have done. We'll get to that. You good? All right. Fuck. Well, I mean, you know, what else do we do?

I'm not taking hot, boiling water to his fucking face, and it already reached us. That makes no sense they got a 52 in route yeah so that's the end of that uh video uh and this is going to switch over to grace and any comments on just that just before we go to grace because now we're seeing from grayson's perspective his his body cam. No, let's just watch it. Okay. The only thing I have is I'm so glad we have this perspective because Grayson kind of blocked off the other officer's camera as the shooting was happening. But again, what I was

saying to you, he did take steps to the right. Grayson did. Why not take steps back? So he went to the right. If you're willing to make take steps back? Right? So he went to the right. If you're willing to make that movement, why not go backwards? Why not go backwards? You better fucking not. That's where I got it. I'll fucking shoot you right in the fucking face.

Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot.

Drop the fucking pot. Drop the fucking pot. Shots fired. Shots fired. Shots fired. Drop the fucking pot. I would guess to me it's further away than I thought. I would say 10 feet and she hasn't even picked up the pot yet. She's got her hands on it.

She definitely didn't point it towards him or like tilt it towards him. Yeah, she's got the pot still on the kitchen stove. So I think at this point, even if she had taken it from that angle and thrown it at him, I mean, it might land on his feet. It might have splattered him. Yeah, but like what you're gonna have a few like burns like well no i mean i don't want anybody i don't want any officers just accepting getting burned but this is another reason why i'm saying he's already 10 feet away he's already almost out of range you can back further up so i'm just gonna keep it going here uh if you want

to stay on me and shannon's trying to edit all this so i apologize to shannon because she's not going to be able to i'm pausing it and playing it as i go but we're at 10 32 right now i'm just going to play it again and see if she ever picks it up i don't think she does i think he pulls out the gun and she kind of flinches and then he moves towards her so toward her exactly flinches flinches is that is that red the pot that she picked up right there Towards her. Toward her, exactly. She drank your fucking face. Clenches, clenches. I don't want to fucking talk to her. Is that red the pot that she picked up right there? Or like she's holding an oven mitt? Do you see what I'm saying? That's not the pot.

The pot's still on the stove. Am I wrong? I feel like she doesn't have the pot. She doesn't have the pot. I feel like the pot is right there. You guys can't see what I'm pointing at. I'm sorry. But it feels like she might have had like an oven mitt or like it's like an oven mitt or a towel like a dish

towel yes the pot is that big silver you know cylindrical is that how you would say that thing yeah yeah yeah that's definitely not a pot so the pot's down and now one of her hand is one of her at least one of her hands is off the pot she has both of her hands is, at least one of her hands is off the pot. She has both of her hands off the pot when she crouches down. Shots fired. Shots fired. Shots fired. Drop the fucking pot. Bring me this now.

We got a headshot wounded a female. Headshot wounded a female. 10-78. Fuck. I was on. i was on i was on i'm gonna go get my kid now get headshot dude she's done you can go get it but and by the way no matter regardless of what you think you are supposed to administer aid uh immediately so him saying you don't need to that's that's not policy and procedure i'm not taking fucking boiling water to the fucking head. As you mentioned,

he's trying to justify it right now. God damn it. God damn it. You good? I'm good. You good? Yeah, I'm good. Holstered up. Let her fucking just... There's nothing we can do, man. Fuck! You good?

Alright. Fuck! Well, I mean, you know, what else do we do? I'm not taking hot, boiling water to the fucking face, and it already reached us. I stand behind what I initially said as far as being able to retreat, and I feel even more strongly about that now because we were talking about it initially.

It looked initially from the other angle that it might be five to seven feet proximity. Now it looks more like 10 to 12 feet in proximity. So if she were to take that boiling water and throw it at him from that distance, he may get splattered. He may get injured. And I don't want that, which is why he should have retreated at that moment. There's no threat to anyone else other than her. If she decides to splash the water on her own face that's extremely unfortunate but she's the only one being injured at that point so the fact that he decides to engage is just terrible and again we're talking about a pot of water it's only dangerous if you put yourself in range of the water and then just a comment at the end you know the water's running towards us right now just a fucking moronic comment but yeah completely unjustified completely unwarranted and i understand the

outrage because this was a in every sense of the word uh it was just wrong it shouldn't have happened but i'll let you weigh in and then i want to talk about a different shooting my shooting and you can overlay that on this because it was a different outcome, but it involved different circumstances. I mean, that was hard to watch. Yeah. They're never easy. That was very hard to watch. And it's always hard to watch these kinds of things. But when you literally see this situation go down, knowing that there was a million and one other ways to handle it, and somebody's life was just tragically cut short for no reason other than the, let's be honest, the mental unwellness of the person in that situation that should have been in control. Her mental stability is not in question here. That will be determined, but the police are supposed to keep their wits about them, even when the people that they're helping or responding to are not in the best mental state. They're supposed to keep their wits around him. This guy, there's no excuse for him. And remember, when we had first talked about this before I watched the video, I said, wow, first degree murder he's being charged with. First degree murder. I said, that's crazy. That's not, it's not premeditated.

I thought first degree murder is usually premeditated. I completely understand now why it's a first degree murder charge. I completely agree with it. And I hope that they throw the book at him. Yeah, they're more than likely arguing that the minute he pulled out his gun, he knew he was going to kill her regardless. That's what they're saying. That in premeditation doesn't have to be days.

Seems like he was just waiting for an opportunity like this, by the way. Yeah, it does. It does sound like that to kind of and I'll go I'll go the shorter version. But I was 23 years old when my shooting happened and it was a little different. But basically we got called. It was Easter Sunday. We get called for a 911 hang up. Very common call happens all the time. Kids playing with the phone or it could be someone who just is moving things around and they knock it off the hook or they hit a button. Back then they had the big buttons with like the fire, the rescue, the police. So this is 2007. So we get called to the house. There's multiple officers there. It's me, someone I'm training, and two Spanish speakingspeaking officers, and that will make more sense as we go into the story. This is a unit home. It's an apartment-style house where

the apartments are stacked on top of each other. We go inside. We don't know why we're there. We have no clue why we're there. We're just trying to figure it out. It could be a home invasion. It could be just a kid playing with the phone. You don't know. You don't know. So your anxiety's up. It's late at night. You don't know what's going on. We get up to the second floor landing and I'm the first one up the stairs and I try to speak with the gentleman. He doesn't speak English. So I move aside. Other officer steps in. He's speaking to him in Spanish and we get the gist of the story that there was a fight. There was some type of altercation between multiple people before we arrived. And some of the people may still be up there. So we go up to the third floor. Again, I'm the first one because now it's this really thin corridor. And as I'm going up to the third floor landing, there's another guy standing there

and it's kind of creepy. He's just looking down at me, not saying anything. So I walk up the stairs and again, I greet him. Hello, how are you? He doesn't answer me. He starts speaking in Spanish. So again, this time, because there's nowhere for me to go, I walk past him to his right on this little landing on the third floor. So to give you a perspective, behind me is a window. In front of me is the individual. On the stairs is the three officers. And then behind the individual that they're talking to is the apartment door, which is shut at this point. So I'm just sitting there listening to them talk in Spanish. I have no clue what's going on. he doesn't get a chance to all of a sudden, the guy that's standing in between me and the door opens the door and just swings it open. And I don't have no clue why. So I'm standing there now and I can see in the apartment, it's completely dark. The apartment is in complete darkness, but the best way to describe it is there's like three or four doors down this hallway. And I can see the door frames, but I can't see

inside the rooms, except for one of the rooms, the one furthest in the back, there's some light admitting from the room. So at least the lamp is on in that room where I can see the door frame and I can kind of see that maybe someone's in there, maybe someone's not, but the light's on. So within a couple seconds, all of a sudden this figure comes out of the room and I cannot see them. I can't see if it's a man or woman. I can't see what they're wearing. They're all, they're just backlit by this room light. But fortunately I see this like outline, this silhouette and as I'm kind of starting at their head and working my eyes down, I can see that there's

this one thing that doesn't align with a human body. And it's this long silhouette of a knife down by their side, like by their, their hip area. And I can, I immediately recognize what it is. So I pull my gun out and I yell knife and I take the guy that's on the stairs and I push him towards the officers. Now, mind you, the officers can't see what I'm seeing. They're like, what the, what the fuck is going on right now? So I push this dude into them. And as soon as I do, the silhouette comes running towards me. Now, to give a little context in law enforcement, it has been done through numerous experiments and different scenarios that if someone is within 21 feet of you with a knife, they can get to you and still kill you even if they're shot. It takes a couple seconds for it to happen. You can still be killed. So if you're within 21 feet of someone and you don't have the ability to retreat, you do have the legal right to shoot them.

I didn't. I backed up and I fell into the window screen and I almost went out the window. And as I'm sitting there with my butt like in the window with my gun pointed at the guy, he gets to the apartment door. Now I can see him clearly bloodshot eyes, not speaking to any of us. We're talking to him in Spanish and English. He's got a huge knife in his hand and he's just kind of sitting in the doorframe looking at us with the knife up above his head. Why I didn't shoot him. I don't know. I probably was going to get killed if in that situation I screwed up, but I just for some reason didn't pull the trigger. I think I was caught off guard So a few seconds go by

He then retreats about two three feet slams the door shut and locks it Now at this point we've established that there's some type of altercation where this individual has already stabbed someone We don't know if that person's in the apartment still or where they are, if they're dead, if they're injured, or if he's going to hurt himself. So now we can't walk away. We can't just go up. All right, well, I guess we can't do nothing. So we kick the door in. I kick the door in, comes off the hinges, and the guy's already waiting for us, still in the darkness in the kitchen. He's kind of in an area where he's not blocked off. He can still retreat, but he's kitchen. He's kind of in an area where he's not blocked off. He can still retreat, but he's not. He's holding his ground about eight, 10 feet away from us. All

three of us go into the apartment. We kind of surround him, but not really. And you'll know more in a second. But again, we're telling him multiple times, drop the knife, drop the knife, drop the knife in Spanish and in English. The only word I can make out is fuck you. That's all I can understand. He's not saying much of anything else. And within a couple seconds, he gets around us. He retreats down this hallway that I described at the beginning. But instead of going into the lit room, he goes into this back room where it kind of cuts to the right. I can't see in it at all. So again, this hallway is really, really narrow. We have to stack up.

And just the way it happened, I was the first one in the stack, but now I have three guys behind me. So we walk into the room. We all have our guns drawn or I have my gun drawn. And I think one of the officer had his gun drawn. Flashlights are out because it's pitch black. And as soon as I come around the corner, this room is approximately 10 by 10 feet. There's a window in the back corner. This individual has their back to me and they're trying to open the window. It's where the fire escape is. We learned later that he was trying to kill the two people. It was his girlfriend and a friend. He had caught them cheating on him. He was going to kill them both. He had stabbed one of them in the foot before we got there because they were protecting themselves. And that's who called the police. But he was

trying to use the fire escape to get back to them because they were on the second floor. So what he doesn't realize is because he's extremely intoxicated and on some other substances that there's a piece of wood in the window. So he's trying to open it and it's not opening because the wood's there. If he were to just remove the wood, he would have been able to get out. So instead he turns around, puts the knife over his head and runs at me. And at this point, there's nowhere for me to go. I've now moved into the room.

The wall is behind me and he's only about seven feet away from me at that point. So I did shoot him. And even after shooting him, I still had to move and he hit the wall behind me. And as he hit shooting him, I still had to move. And he hit the wall behind me. And as he hit the ground, he still had the knife. Unfortunately, he didn't survive his injuries.

But I say all this story to say, take that and overlay it over what we had here. The inability to retreat, a knife opposed to a pot of boiling water, multiple attempts to de-escalate the situation. And when the state police came in, because you always have an outside party look at these cases, the only criticism they really had of my shooting was that I waited too long to shoot him. He had gun stippling on his chest. And if I didn't hit him where I did, he would have stabbed me in the head. He would have stabbed me in the head. I wouldn't be here with you. So that was the only criticism. And just for anyone to kind of wrap the story up, every shooting goes to a grand jury hearing, regardless of the circumstances.

I was cleared at grand jury after they had the opportunity to speak with me. Once they kind of got together to talk about it, they deliberated for eight minutes. And the major reason why that was is because the person that I shot, his name was Selvin Gardado, 27 years old. I have no ill will towards him, even to this day. His parents testified on my behalf to say he was going to kill them or they were going to kill him. That's the only way this was ending. So I say all that to say, you have to look at the situation. I was in it and I was in fear of my life when I shot him. Was this officer in fear of his life when he shot Sonia? For all the reasons that we've already laid out, his size, the ability to retreat, the weapon being used, and not even talking about the details of how she was holding the quote unquote weapon, which that's still up for debate.

There is no way to justify shooting this woman. And I do agree with you that it almost seemed like he was waiting for this moment. He was, he was waiting for someone to try him. And you could tell almost instantly he's trying to look at his partner and justify what he just did. He's almost trying to be like, well, we had no other choice. Right. And the guy's like, we bitch. What? Yeah, exactly.

Like he's like, well, the water's coming towards us. See, he's like trying to almost like set the narrative or almost say to him, like, we better get on the same page. Right. And there's a power dynamic there. I'm speculating, but it looks like to me, Grayson. It looks like Grayson's in charge yeah grayson's been on the job probably longer this might be a newer guy i wouldn't be because a couple times he he sends him to go run the plate he sends him to go check the back room so yeah

that's a senior on the shots yeah that's a seniority thing i don't know the difference in time on the job but uh yeah this is um a completely unjustified shooting. There's no ifs, ands, buts about it. You're not going to hear many officers defend this. I will say if it was another situation where they're in a room and the officer doesn't have the ability to retreat and he's only four to six feet away from her, if she was picking up the pot and had the ability to throw it in his eyes you could blind him so that is something where under those circumstances we may have a different situation but that's not what we have here but it's not even like she was like i'm about to throw this

water in your face she didn't even make a threat i i'm more concerned about the fact that she doesn't even look like she's getting ready to throw it at him. That's right. Like the video doesn't lie. Dude, not even a little bit. Okay. No. So a little bit. I, I agree with everything you said as far as the charges and what happened here. And I've always said, I will defend police officers when they're doing the right thing. I am pro law enforcement. I believe that we need officers. We need good officers out there protecting us. But this guy is not it. And so what you need to do here is make an example of him to let everyone know this will not be tolerated. And it's going to be something where if you do it, you are going to find yourself in a

really bad situation and probably lose your freedom. So I'm just saying, thank God he's off the streets. Honestly, like it's unfortunate that it took this. Yeah. Yeah. It said they had to come to this five or six times, different departments. I'm sure there's a lot of people in Springfield that are like, yes, that like this guy needed to be found out. Wait until his jacket comes out. Yep. I'm sure there's a lot of people who have interactions with him that they're like, yeah, we knew something like this was going to happen. I'm sure there's a ton of complaints against him. So I don't know.

I haven't seen I haven't seen many officers defending him. Maybe there are, but I haven't seen any. So and now I can see why. But terrible case. We feel there's nothing to defend. There's literally nothing to defend. Our thoughts are obviously with Sonia's family. There's more. She has bad. There's nothing to defend. There's literally nothing to defend. Our thoughts are obviously with Sonia's family. I know she has kids.

She's got kids. She's got kids. And from what they were saying, they didn't even know for up to 24 hours who shot Sonia. So there's definitely a lot going on here. It'll be outside agencies that investigate the case. It won't be his police department. It'll be the state police or the FBI even could get involved. So we'll see how it all plays out. I hope this video isn't too jumbled. We don't normally do it like this. So

hopefully that all makes sense. And any final words from you? I mean, it's pretty cut and dry, right? There's not really much to debate. I'm disgusted. Honestly, I'm disgusted. Yeah, me likewise. I mean, there's not much to debate. It's another stain on law enforcement. Honestly, I'm disgusted. it's really troubling and it's a concerning factor because you're allowing these individuals to have this power and what about the ones that are not caught on tape and what about the ones where we don't necessarily hear about it because it doesn't get to this point but again it's a situation where police officers abuse their their their position and you know it just it creates this distrust amongst the community which makes the job harder for all the good cops. And so that's where I am on it.

I got nothing else. No. No, I have nothing else. We appreciate you guys being with us. And hopefully everyone's okay after watching that video. We will be back later this week. And I should also say, I didn't even think about it when we did this, but apologies to everyone on audio. Because this video is not going to make much sense to anyone who's on audio. They can watch along though. Yeah, they can watch

along. If you're trying to watch this one or listen to this one, I should say in your car, probably not going to go well. Didn't think about that, but you needed context. You needed the videos. You couldn't do it without it. So if you haven't watched the video and you're listening on audio, listen to it. Then go watch the video yourself. That's going to do it for us. Damn, yeah. Everyone stay safe out there. And we will see you later this week for part three of the final part of this series regarding Dr. Thomas Coleman.

And we're going to wrap this series up. Audio will be out on Friday. Video will be out on Sunday. Everyone take care and we'll see you later this week. Bye.