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By Guy Page
Police body camera footage published by the Caledonian-Record newspaper shows the moment Capt. Jason Gray was shot in the face twice with shotgun pellets on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024, allegedly by serial felon and drug dealer Scott Mason.
Gray managed to fire one round in return, and despite his wounds walked down the stairs into the police cruiser. Officer Jasmine Hendry drove him to the hospital. Mason escaped but was soon captured and is now in custody pending trial.
Hendry’s body cam footage includes “other moments from the chaotic scene that the now-retired Gray said deserve scrutiny for the betterment of the department,” the Caledonian-Record said in its September 26 YouTube post.
The video begins with Hendry following Gray into an apartment building at 261 Portland St. to investigate a report of domestic assault by Mason on his wife, Patrice. Patrice can be seen in a hallway, hands to her face, at the left of the photo depicting the actual moment of Gray being shot.
The six-minute, 44 second video concludes with Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital personnel wheeling Gray, stricken with pellets from two shotgun blasts, toward the NVRH emergency room.
A September 2025 Attorney General report cleared Gray of misuse of deadly force. The report offers a detailed description of what transpired.
Once inside the building, Gray began walking up a flight of stairs, followed by Hendry, when he encountered a woman who was the reported domestic assault victim. While standing just feet away from Gray, the woman pointed down a hallway which Gray turned towards. Seconds later, a gunshot sounded, and a round of pellet shot hit Gray, staggering him.
Officer Hendry ran back down the stairs, and the woman ran out of the hallway. Gray then retreated behind a doorframe, drew his firearm, and peered down the hallway to locate the shooter when a second round of pellet shot hit Gray.
During this second round of pellet shots, Gray discharged one bullet from his firearm in the direction of the shooter, but it did not strike the shooter or any other person.
Gray then collapsed from his pellet shot injuries. While on the floor, Gray saw Scott Mason, who was carrying a shotgun. Mason approached Gray and yelled, “get the [expletive] out,” before fleeing the house through a second-floor window.
Gray, who retired in April, recalled a harrowing ordeal inside a Portland Street house on “Friday the 13th,” telling the Record last week that he wasn’t sure he would make it out alive. He now lives with lasting injuries from that day, including double vision in one eye, pellet scars on his arms, nerve damage that has left his fingers and teeth numb, and an impaired voice box that makes it difficult to raise his pitch.
Mason already had a lengthy police record before the alleged shooting. In April 2024, Mason, of Portland Street, was jailed without bail by Judge Benjamin D. Battles after allegedly attacking a pregnant woman. Two weeks later, Judge Michael R. Kainen ordered his release following a weight-of-the-evidence hearing. Mason pleaded not guilty in Caledonia Superior Court to a felony charge of second-degree aggravated domestic assault with a prior conviction.
According to a police affidavit, the alleged victim told investigators that Mason punched her in front of her 3-year-old child, while she was pregnant, during what she described as a “crack rage.” In a sworn statement, she said the assault happened “because I wouldn’t give him the car keys.”
Court records show Mason has a lengthy criminal history in Vermont, including a prior conviction for domestic assault and six prior felony convictions for aggravated assault, narcotics sales, accessory before the fact, and two counts of burglary. Prosecutors charged him as a habitual offender, a designation that carried the possibility of a life sentence if convicted in the April case.
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Categories: Public Safety
Vtdigger never reported this, to my knowledge, high
With restorative justice, you are supposed to be restored. Letting criminals run free after a crime is aiding and abetting criminals.
The current plan is helping no one, but those intent on bringing chaos to Vermont. We need better leadership.
I don’t believe “restorative justice ” is about restoring criminals to law abiding citizens. I believe it’s a marxist construct pertaining to so called judicial equity in criminal cases aimed to tip the outcome scales of criminals to a more theoretically even figure. It’s an emotionally driven, illogical, failed and dangerous concept that endangers everyone, especially law enforcement officials. Prison populations don’t proportionally represent certain segments of our society’s population demographics because some groups of people are just statistically more likely to commit crimes. For example why don’t women represent 51% of our prisoner population in vermont or nationally? The answer : Men commit more crimes. Other demographics also disproportionately commit crimes and SHOULD be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned at disproportionate rates ensuring the saftey of all law abiding citizens.
Well of course it is! but they would deny it, and call you a racist, lol.
So, if you just call them out on their BS, then they have to swim and marinate in their own lies, which is how you defeat them, they end up fighting themselves and you stand by and watch them implode.
They could win the debate of public opinion quite easily, but just explaining what they are doing, using a Marxist decoder ring, it would be much fun.
The VTGOP hasn’t figured this out yet, but there is hope, the radio show article shows there is hope.
I believe that it is succeeding. The outcomes are what are desired by the people in control. Of course it fails to keep “the people” safe and free. That isn’t what the controllers want. They want crime and chaos.
Six prior felony convictions and Mason was still out on the street? Why?
Six prior felonies and Mason had a firearm. Why?
According to the article in the Caledonia Record, “At the sound of the gun blast Officer Hendry heads back down the stairs with an exclamation of “Oh sh—!”. The recording shows St. Johnsbury Police Sgt. Steven Hartwell and Officer (now lieutenant) Kevin Wilson standing outside the apartment building. he recording captures audio to include Capt. Gray saying “Oh my God” followed by the sound of another gunshot. Investigation would later determine that it was actually the sound of two guns fired simultaneously as Capt. Gray returned fire at the same time Mason allegedly took a second shot. Those shots were fired at 4:32:16 p.m.
Officer Hendry gets to the porch near where the other officers were standing. She communicates her belief that the gunshots were “flash bang (grenades) maybe” and that “the captain is still up there.”
Nine seconds after the sound of the second gunshots, the camera records the voice of Capt. Gray saying, “I’m hit.”
Six seconds after that, Officer Hendry, with a weapon drawn, heads back inside and starts up the stairs. She stops when she sees Capt. Gray coming down the stairs. The captain says, “I need an ambulance” as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. It was 4:32:40 p.m., which means it had been less than a minute between the time the captain entered the building and exited it.”
Time for that rabid dog to get put down.
Good question.