Cop described Sonya Massey shooting as ‘self-inflicted’ in initial dispatch

‘Just to confirm: self-inflicted?’ a police dispatcher asks, to which a voice replies, ‘Self-inflicted’

After fatally shooting an unarmed Black woman who called 911 to report what she thought was a prowler outside her Illinois home, police claimed her death was in fact self-inflicted, according to the victim’s family and dispatch audio from the incident.

Police at first told hospital staff that Sonya Massey, 36, had died by suicide, Jimmie Crawford Jr., the father of Massey’s daughter, said Tuesday at a press conference organized by civil rights attorney Ben Crump. At the same time, officers told Crawford that a neighbor had been responsible for Massey’s killing, he said. Massey’s son said police told him that his mother “had been shot in the eye and it came out her neck.”

“They didn’t tell me who,” Malachi Hill Massey, 17, said on Tuesday. “They were just saying [it was] ‘somebody.’”