Nora’s Story: A mother’s fight to find the truth

My name is Minister Nora Massey, and I am the mother of the late Terrol Massey.

My son went to prison when he was just 16 years old for a crime he did not commit. For 16 years I stood by him, visiting him, writing him, and waiting for the day he would finally come home. He never did.

I remember during the height of COVID, Terrol was actually in good spirits because I was coming to see him. He had lost some privileges in solitary—I don’t even know why or what else you can take from someone in solitary. When I pulled up to the prison that day, a guard met me in the parking lot and told me my son was in the hospital. That was the first time anyone ever told me anything about his condition.

In 2021, Terrol was in a coma for 3 months before God gave him his wings.  I was there with my son until he passed away.  Yet, the story the State of New York  gave me still makes no sense. They first said he “overdosed on bug spray.” How does a young man in solitary confinement, locked down, stripped of nearly everything—get access to bug spray?

For years, I visited my son faithfully until Covid hit. Sixteen years. And yet New York State never picked up the phone to tell me that my son was sick, or hurt, or in danger. No one sat with me, no one explained. They just let me find out at the prison gates, like it was nothing.  The guard told me that he had overdosed on bug spray and met me at the gate when I came to visit my son.  It was there, in the parking lot, that he told me that my son was in the hospital.  If I hadn’t come to visit my son, would they have even called me? 

The story changed when I was preparing to come to the hospital and the nurse said that my son was on life support and in a coma and had kidney failure. And now is when I found out instead of receiving a call when he was first admitted? After 2 weeks in the hospital they gave him a biopsy and discovered that he had lesions on his brain.  Despite his pleas that something was wrong, after passing out, after excruciating headaches and vomiting, they did nothing and kept saying nothing was wrong with him.  As usual, the aspirin was the only relief given.  

My son died four years shy of finishing his sentence. Four years away from freedom.

I will never get answers that bring my son back. But I will not stop asking how this happened and why New York continues to hide the truth from mothers like me.