The Lemmy Club

KYLE ADKINS WAS leaving his parents’ house in Kincaid, a small village in central Illinois’ Christian County, to pick up his young children from their mother’s house just a few blocks away on the night of May 8, 2021.

Kincaid police officer Sean Grayson pulled him over — but he wasn’t sure why.

Grayson told Adkins there was a warrant out for his arrest and issued him a “notice to appear,” a document equivalent to an arrest, recommending felony drug charges against him. The case dragged out for two years before it was dropped, and a new investigation reveals the warrant — and other evidence Grayson said he had against Adkins — never actually existed. Body camera footage shows Grayson admitting to the chief of police he had no evidence to recommend charges, but even after the footage surfaced in court, no other department or agency was notified.

Grayson, now 30, would go on to work at four other police departments across central Illinois, the last being the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, where he would fatally shoot and kill Sonya Massey, 36, in her home in July 2024 after she called the police for help. Grayson shot at Massey, an unarmed Black woman whose family had called police with concerns about her mental health, three times, hitting her once in the head. He’s since been charged with murdering her.