This story contains descriptions of violence. Readers looking to avoid these descriptions may skip the ‘Eyewitness accounts’ section. You can read the author’s prior coverage of the Shacoby Kenny killing here.
Shacoby Kenny’s mother has carried the pain of losing her son for more than 10 months. The anguish has intensified since he was killed while being held on bail at the South Bay House of Correction, since the guards who caused his death are still working there, and state officials have indicated there is nothing anyone can do about it at this juncture.
“They all gave me the same thing: that the sheriff is an elected official. We can’t make him put them guys off the job,” Kenny’s mother, Druesilla Brown, told the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism in August. “This is what was told to me over and over and over and over again.”
Brown said that message of powerlessness was relayed in multiple meetings earlier this year with representatives from the state Attorney General’s Office and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. The AGO is leading a criminal investigation into Kenny’s death; the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is also investigating, but has referred questions about the case to the AGO.
Brown’s lawyer, Tony Ellison, confirmed Brown’s account of the meetings in a joint follow-up interview: “They said we can’t tell an elected official what to do with their internal employment decisions.” Neither Attorney General Andrea Campbell nor Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden attended the meetings, Ellison said.
“I guess the sheriff is an island and they get to do what they want to do,” Brown said in the interview with her attorney.
A spokesperson for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department responded to a detailed list of questions from BINJ for this article, but did not address why none of the officers implicated in Kenny’s death have been fired, suspended, or placed on administrative leave. Instead, they repeated a core claim the department has maintained for months: “All eleven of the officers involved in the use of force response remain on non-inmate/detainee contact positions.”
Ellison also noted that in the meetings earlier this year, officials said that a grand jury investigation had been initiated, but did not offer further details about that process or its timeline. The AGO did not answer a question seeking confirmation of the grand jury investigation, what charges have been considered, and when those charges—if any—might be filed.
The spokesperson for the AGO also did not answer a question about when the AG launched her criminal investigation, although its existence was made public in a July Boston Globe article.
The official cause of death
Kenny’s December 2025 death was ruled a homicide by the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in July, but that ruling does not determine criminal liability. The official cause, according to the agency that oversees the medical examiner, was “hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy due to resuscitated cardiac arrest during physical restraint by correction officers.” In other words, he died from a fatal injury resulting from an insufficient oxygen supply to the brain.
No charges have been filed in relation to Kenny’s death. But prior to the ruling by the medical examiner, witnesses told BINJ and other outlets that they saw guards violently beat Kenny, a 32-year-old Springfield man. Kenny was a pretrial detainee held on $2,500 bail for assault charges and was widely known to struggle with his mental health.
This all comes on top of allegations of serious missteps in the initial stages of the police investigation into Kenny’s death. Men who watched the beating unfold claim that some of the same officers who assaulted Kenny also helped transport witnesses to give their initial statements to Boston Police Department homicide detectives. The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department denies these claims. BPD did not respond to requests for comment.
BINJ sent a list of detailed questions to the AGO and the Suffolk DA’s office regarding the claims made by Brown and Ellison, along with the other allegations made by sources who spoke for this article. Each office responded with a statement rather than specific responses.
A spokesperson for the DA’s office said, “The investigation is active and ongoing,” and referred questions about “administrative authority” to the sheriff’s department.
A spokesperson for the AGO responded with the same statement that office has provided for previous articles. They expressed sympathy for Kenny’s family, but said they cannot comment further out of respect for the criminal investigation underway.
Officers still in contact with detainees?
The aftermath of Kenny’s killing took a new turn in September, after a local advocacy group claimed that it had documentation showing at least some of the implicated officers working in close proximity to detainees as recently as late summer.
In a public letter, the advocacy organization Prisoners’ Legal Services of MA charged that several officers involved in Kenny’s death used force against individuals in the jail in at least two documented instances since last December. Also according to PLS, two of the officers involved in Kenny’s death were working during cell searches as recently as August—after the state ruled his death a homicide.
These claims directly contradict the statement released by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in April, which said that “all officers in question continue to serve in non-inmate/detainee contact posts, pending the outcome of the investigation.”
In response to questions, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department disputed the PLS claims, writing “the officers in question were immediately reassigned out of the unit, and were not assigned to any response teams in the building.” Echoing statements previously provided to MassLive, they added, “eleven officers were later reassigned to non-inmate contact posts shortly after.”
PLS Executive Director David Rini told BINJ in an interview that the organization stands by its findings: “What we see is officers using force in ways that even the sheriff’s department’s own policies don’t allow, not being held accountable when that happens, not being moved off of contact [positions]. … It sort of leads to the conclusion that kind of no one’s running the show. And that’s a really, really dangerous place for a correctional institution to be in.”
The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, which oversees the South Bay House of Correction as well as the jail at Nashua Street, has been in a negative spotlight for reasons in addition to Kenny’s death over the past year. Its elected leader, Sheriff Steven Tompkins, stood trial for allegedly extorting a marijuana dispensary; a federal jury acquitted him in early September, after which he returned to his post following a 12-month hiatus. With interim leadership filling the gap, besides the Kenny killing, earlier this year, Suffolk officers were caught on tape brawling in an elevator with each other, and recently, the department reported a data breach targeting prisoner medical records.
The PLS report was compiled through a combination of witness interviews and written records, including documentation obtained through client-specific requests such as brutality intakes, disciplinary reports, incident reports, and use of force reports.
“Basic rules that they have written down already prohibit things like chokeholds. And Mr. Kenny died, essentially, from a chokehold,” Rini said. “So clearly, very, very, very basic, clear rules are not being followed.”
In its letter, PLS was firm that guards’ use of force against Kenny was part of “a broader culture of violence and impunity for staff that goes beyond any one incident or type of force.”
Or, as Rini said, “Violence is just really, really, really common at South Bay.”
Eyewitness accounts
In the immediate aftermath of Kenny’s death, the sheriff’s department told media outlets that Kenny had acted erratically and attacked members of the custody staff.
That narrative was complicated later in December when the Boston Globe published surveillance footage showing a brief interaction between Kenny and a single officer that escalated into multiple officers chasing and eventually surrounding him.
BINJ is providing a fuller description of those events here based on the accounts of two witnesses, in order to inform the public about the extent of mob violence that witnesses say the guards used throughout the incident. The sheriff’s department declined to comment on the witnesses’ description of events, citing the ongoing investigation.
Due to safety concerns expressed by both witnesses, we gave them the pseudonyms “Michael” and “Chris.”
Michael and Chris describe the same series of events. According to them, after the initial interaction between Kenny and a single officer, Kenny ran away. The chase is shown in the clip published by the Globe. Other officers on the unit joined in, chasing Kenny through the open area while other detainees watched.
By the two accounts, the incident took on a different tone around the time Kenny ended up at a wall and the Sheriff’s Escort and Response Team (SERT) arrived.
“Mr. Kenny had kind of stopped running,” Michael recalled of that moment, adding that Kenny and the officers appeared to square up in a fighting stance. Chris described that moment slightly differently: “While his back was on the wall, he was just standing up there looking, like complete shock.”
Both men agree, however, that at this point in time, it was the special unit which escalated the violence. “That’s when I seen a lot of SERT officers come into the unit; and when they came into the unit, they grabbed Kenny, they slammed him against the wall,” Michael said, adding that then multiple officers pushed or forced Kenny to the ground.
Chris described the same series of events: “SERT came in … they all rushed towards him. Mind you, Shacoby was just on the wall standing—like he’s not a threat, not doing anything. All they had to do was put him on the floor, cuff him, and carry him to the hole. That would’ve been the end of it.”
Instead, Chris said, a SERT officer violently hit Kenny, causing him to fall. “That’s when all the COs got on top of him, started beating him,” Chris said. “The other COs in our unit, they’re there just beating the life out of this man for no reason. He’s screaming, Yo, I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe. … Every CO held a part of his body while others were simultaneously hitting him.”
Michael described similar events, saying that after SERT officers forcefully pushed Kenny to the ground, he saw officers punch, kick, and press their knees on Kenny’s “back shoulder blade, his neck area.” “I heard Mr. Kenny yelling and asking for someone to help him. I heard Mr. Kenny screaming … He told him that he couldn’t breathe. I remember him yelling and asking someone to say a prayer for him.”
“Even in the middle of that,” Michael continued, “I even seen officers, like, tap another officer, like telling him to, like, relax, like, Chill out, you’re doing too much. Which they didn’t stop. … I remember them holding his legs up backwards … kind of like a hog-tied type of situation. And they were pressing against his legs.”
Even after Kenny became clearly unresponsive, Michael said that guards were “still applying pressure or force on him.” Soon after they let up, Michael said an officer started doing chest compressions on Kenny, which he estimated lasted 20 to 30 minutes until an ambulance came.
Kenny was transported to a hospital, where he was declared dead the following morning, according to previous media reports that cited officials. Chris said Kenny already appeared dead when emergency workers put him on a stretcher and removed him from the jail.
Soon after, a third witness filed a sick slip with staff at the jail, begging to speak to someone from the mental health unit after witnessing “someone killed on the unit.” The incident, the man wrote, had aggravated his PTSD from previous traumatic experiences.
Two days later, a case worker wrote back, promising the Mental Health Department would meet with every detainee on the unit.
Criticisms of the early investigation
Critics have serious concerns about the early stages of the police investigation, starting with the step of taking witness statements.
Local attorney Katy Naples-Mitchell, who was at the time representing witnesses on a pro bono basis, detailed her concerns in a letter last December to the AGO’s chief of the civil rights division: “Some of the correctional officers involved in the assault and murder of Mr. Kenny walked witnesses down to [Boston Police Department Homicide Unit] interviews, a clear intimidation tactic.” (The AGO’s press office did not respond to a request for comment on this letter.)
Naples-Mitchell based her claims on interviews with 10 pretrial detainees who said they had witnessed the attack and whom she took on as pro bono clients at the time. (Naples-Mitchell went on to interview dozens more witnesses, eventually taking on about 25 as clients; she has since had a change in employment and is no longer representing them.)
Detainees at South Bay who spoke with BINJ in the months following Kenny’s death said they saw implicated officers walk witnesses down to speak with Boston police homicide detectives.
“So, I’m downstairs, and just—I seen some of the COs that was on the unit when he died help carry us downstairs,” Chris said. “It’s like, Are y’all trying to intimidate us?”
Michael said that officers involved in the attack on Kenny—including one who had his knee on Kenny’s neck—were involved with “walking these guys down to make a statement … to the BPD.” Michael said that he declined to speak with the police at the time because he was scared of potential retaliation.
Asked for comment regarding this claim, the sheriff’s department spokesperson pushed back, saying, “No SCSD officer was involved in escorting witnesses to Boston homicide detectives.”
Chris said that he wasn’t informed of his right to have an attorney present during questioning: “I just thought it was a mandatory interview.” The public defender’s office, also known as the Committee for Public Counsel Services, raised the same concern in a January letter to AG Campbell. Citing allegations from multiple unnamed CPCS clients, attorney Anthony Benedetti wrote that allowing law enforcement to obtain statements without lawyers present represented “an abuse of the power imbalance inherent in pretrial detention,” and placed the men in “extreme legal jeopardy.”
Asked for comment on the claims of questioning without a lawyer present, the sheriff’s department spokesperson denied any involvement at all in the interrogation process: “You’ll have to consult with Boston Police, as we were not present for their interviews.”
The Boston Police Department did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The intimidation of witnesses allegedly continued long after the beating of Kenny. “Nearly three weeks after this killing, the officers who killed Mr. Kenny in a violent mob assault have not been suspended and continue to report to work on the same unit,” Naples-Mitchell wrote in her December 26 letter, putting certain words in italicized bold letters for emphasis. “Some of these officers have made threats against the men still living on the unit for ‘snitching’ by talking to investigators.”
Michael and Chris described the aftermath of the assault to BINJ in stark detail.
“The very next day [after Kenny’s death], it was the same person that was on the unit that helped murder Shacoby—they came back working on the unit like nothing happened,” Chris said. “So, it’s like, y’all have no respect. Or, y’all just feel like y’all could kill him and get away with it because no one would speak up.”
Michael painted a similar picture, saying that after Kenny’s death, one of the officers went around making comments like, Whoever snitched on me, when I find out who it is, Imma slap the shit out of them.
Asked for comment on these claims of witness intimidation, the sheriff’s department spokesperson responded: “The officers in question were immediately reassigned out of the unit, and were not assigned to any response teams in the building.”
Stories like these pushed activists to call for an independent investigation, long before the AGO made her inquiry public.
“The very police department that is investigating this murder, the witnesses also have been arrested by the BPD,” activist Jasmin Borges, director of organizing for Families for Justice as Healing, told BINJ at a February protest outside the South Bay House of Correction. “And the DA’s office are prosecuting them. That’s a conflict of interest.”
‘I won’t let his death go in vain’
For Druesilla Brown, the grief of her son’s death is compounded by the knowledge of what could have been.
“My son did not want to die,” she said in her interview with BINJ. “And he didn’t have to. He’ll never have an opportunity to get married, fall in love, to have children—have my grandchildren.”
She spoke about her many attempts over the years to get help for her son as he struggled with mental health—including his multiple stays at Bridgewater State Hospital, the psychiatric correctional facility—only to feel repeatedly let down by the system.
“I want him to be remembered as a young man who needed a second chance, who needed a breather, who needed some psychiatric care,” she said.
The matter of Kenny’s mental health played out in heartwrenching detail even after he was gone. Brown said that day she received the news of her son’s death, as she was going to the hospital in Boston to view his body, she got a call from the attorney who had been representing him in his pending cases.
Brown recounted, “As I’m coming out of the parking lot, the lawyer calls me [and says], Ms. Brown, we got good news, the psychiatrist that we have, he found him not competent to stand trial. And before he could finish, I said, My son is dead.”
But even as she shared those details, Brown kept stopping herself. She doesn’t want her son to be remembered only for his struggles.
“I want him to be remembered as a loving, fun-loving jokester,” she said. “He had hope. No matter what things looked like, he was smiling through them all.”
She spoke about his gift for playing drums, his love of football, and how fiercely protective and loving Shacoby was toward her and the rest of his family. And she repeated her call for accountability, to not let culpability for his killing be turned around on the victim.
“I won’t let his death go in vain. I want justice for my son,” she said. “Somebody has to be accountable for what they did. I don’t care where my son was, I don’t care what he did. … He should have never been in South Bay, ever. He should have been in Bridgewater or somewhere to get the help. Now they’re trying to spin it and blame him. You know, He’s chaotic. … What about your monstrous guards in that prison, your monstrous guards whose reign of terror has been reigning for a long time?”
“I want him to be remembered as a human being, as somebody’s child,” she said. “My child.”
