‘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.’”

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying ‘Got rocks in your head?’ to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren’t careful.

    Sure, self-inflicted. Having the absolute gall to be black in front of a cop is really just suicide.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Calling the cops is what made it self-inflicted. If you’re white, they probably just shoot your dog. (No guarantees.)

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Seriously. This just happened.

        (For the record Edina has a somewhat posh shopping center. The kind of joints that charge 5x what the same chair costs at Hom furniture)

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Look I had to find the video and confirm I heard it right the first time.

    The guys says “I’m going to fucking shoot you in the face”.

    He then shoots her in the face.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      “Your Honor, my client is an honest man, as is evidenced by his statement about face-shooting.”