Personnel files from a sheriff’s department that recently employed the deputy who fatally shot Sonya Massey in her home revealed additional details about his work history before he arrived in Sangamon County, Illinois.
Sean Grayson worked for the Logan County, Illinois, Sheriff’s Office from May 2022 to April 2023.
In his job application, he disclosed that he had abused alcohol in the Army and that he had been intoxicated “a lot” in his life. While he was working for Logan County, he was also accused in separate complaints of leaving a woman feeling violated during her arrest and of harassing her fiancé during a jail visit. Grayson rebutted the allegations in both complaints, which are marked as “unfounded” in his file.
He was disciplined once after he hit a deer with his squad car during a chase that violated department policy.
The records, which NBC News obtained through a public records request, said Grayson left the sheriff’s department in “good standing.”
Grayson shot and killed Massey in her home in Springfield on July 6. Massey, who was Black, had called the police early that morning to report a suspected prowler. Grayson, who is white, and another Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy, who has not been identified, responded just before 1 a.m. While he was in her home, Grayson shot Massey in the head in an exchange over a pot of water. He then discouraged his partner from trying to save her, according to body camera video.
The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office fired Grayson last week. He has been charged with murder in Massey’s death.
Grayson had been employed by six law enforcement agencies since 2020, all in central Illinois, state law enforcement records show. Three of those jobs were part-time, with some overlapping with others.
Admission of previous alcohol abuse
In an initial applicant interview for the Logan County Sheriff’s Office dated March 25, 2022, Grayson was asked whether there was ever a period in his life when he thought he had abused alcoholic beverages, and he said he had while he was in the Army.
In an interview Thursday, Ben Crump, the prominent civil rights attorney representing Massey’s family, said it was “appalling” that Grayson was allowed to work in law enforcement and that the disclosures to the Logan County Sheriff’s Office should have raised red flags.
“It makes me wonder if he had any kind of drugs or alcohol in his system the night he killed Sonya Massey,” Crump said. “And obviously, it begs the question, how did he even get a job as a sheriff’s deputy with his checkered past?”
Before he worked in law enforcement, Grayson had been a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the Army from May 2014 to February 2016, Army spokesman Bryce Dubee said. He had no deployments and left the Army with the rank of private first class.
Grayson twice pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, in 2015, while he was enlisted in the Army, and in 2016, court records show.
According to his Army discharge paperwork, obtained from his personnel file with the Kincaid Police Department through a public records request, his reason for separation is listed as “misconduct, (serious offense).” The police department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about what explanation, if any, Grayson gave about the circumstances of his discharge.
Dubee said he could not comment.
“The Privacy Act and DoD [Department of Defense] policy prevent us from releasing information relating to the misconduct of low-level employees or characterization of service at discharge,” Dubee said in a statement.
Grayson disclosed both DUIs in the initial applicant interview with the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. He also made it aware that his license had been suspended in 2016 for driving under the influence of alcohol.
He was employed by the Auburn Police Department when he applied to work in Logan County. According to a copy of the applicant interview, Grayson said that he did not drink regularly, “only on vacation,” and that he had last had a drink at a wedding in January of that year.
In response to a question about how many times in his life he had been intoxicated, Grayson responded, “A lot. Maybe over a hundred,” according to the document.
Grayson’s attorney declined to comment.
Discipline after car chase
Grayson was disciplined once while he was working for Logan County, according to his personnel file. In September 2022, he was pursuing a truck after he noticed the driver behaving suspiciously and later observed the driver failing to signal while turning.
He pursued the truck “at a high rate of speed” and “failed to show due caution while driving through stop intersections,” according to an internal investigation report included in the personnel file.
In an interview with a superior after the crash, Grayson acknowledged he lacked experience.
The supervisor recommended he receive training in high-stress decision-making, traffic stops and report writing. The supervisor also said Grayson needed to “read, understand and discuss” the department’s policy.
Two complaints ruled ‘unfounded’
Grayson was the subject of two complaints while he worked in Logan County, according to his personnel file. In December 2022, a woman accused him of “inappropriate” behavior during her arrest. And a month later, her fiancé, who was an inmate at the Logan County Jail, accused Grayson of “abusing his power” and harassment when Grayson questioned him after her arrest. The superintendent of the jail did not immediately respond to a request for comment about their allegations.
The woman alleged that in October 2022, Grayson instructed her to remove drugs that she had hidden inside herself in front of him and another male officer at the Logan County Jail.
“I went to do as he had instructed me to do feeling very afraid and forced to do such action,” but a female corrections officer intervened, she wrote in the complaint.
The woman also alleged that when she was later taken to the hospital for the drugs to be removed, as she lay on a hospital bed behind a curtain “completely exposed,” Grayson “flung the curtain back” and saw her exposed.
“I felt very violated on both occasions,” she wrote in her complaint.
In another complaint filed in January 2023, her fiancé said Grayson visited him while he was an inmate at the Logan County Jail because of the woman’s complaint. He alleged that Grayson told him that another man had bailed the woman out of jail and that she was living with the man.
According to the complaint, the fiancé said he asked Grayson why he had told him that and Grayson responded: “Well I thought you guys were getting married. That’s pretty f—– up don’t you think?”
Attempts to reach the woman and the man who filed the complaints were unsuccessful Thursday.
Grayson rebutted the allegations, which are marked as “unfounded” in his file. He wrote in a response included in his personnel file that he had asked the fiancé whether he knew a man who was connected to him and the woman who filed the complaint, but he denied making the statements the fiancé quoted him as making. He also said that he did not harass the fiancé and that he had not spoken to or interviewed him alone.
Grayson also rejected the woman’s claims and said he was never alone with her. He said that he had knocked and entered her hospital room but that she was clothed and had a blanket on her when he did so. He said he left the room after he gave the doctor an evidence bag to retrieve the drugs.
Grayson has pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in Massey’s death. He is being detained without bond.
Massey’s killing has drawn widespread attention and spurred protests in Springfield, which is about 200 miles southwest of Chicago.
