Authorities have released video that appears to show Javion Magee, a Black man found dead last week in North Carolina under a tree with a rope around his neck, buying rope at a Walmart the day before his body was found.
The video was recorded on Sept. 10 and showed Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver from Illinois, walking toward a self-checkout lane with a bundle of rope in his hand, police said.
The young man was found dead the next day, sitting at the foot of a tree with a rope around his neck and the other end tied to the tree. CBS-17 reported.
Police previously insisted Magee “was not lynched” as the case gained increasing attention last week.
The Vance County Sheriff’s Office has released footage showing Javion Magee buying a bundle of blue rope at a Walmart in Henderson, North Carolina
Magee is seen here pulling out a card to pay for the rope
Magee throws the rope in the air as he walks out of the store. He would be found dead the next day about six miles away from the Walmart.
In the new video, Magee can be seen paying for the blue rope by card before leaving the store.
Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame said ABC 11 that his office is confident the rope he bought was used in his death, but Magee’s family remains unhappy with the investigation.
“There has been information that a lynching has taken place, but there has been no lynching,” Brame said earlier.
“The young man was not dangling from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree. The rope was around his neck. It was not a noose. There was no knot in the rope, so this was not a lynching here in Vance County.”
DailyMail.com has contacted the sheriff’s office several times for more information about the circumstances surrounding Magee’s death.
As of Monday, no cause of death had been determined.
A spokeswoman for the Magees, Candice Matthews, told DailyMail.com that the family still has questions.
Matthews said Magee delivered a load of rope from his truck to a Walmart distribution center before buying the rope, adding that the rope he bought may have had another purpose.
“The family still believes this video doesn’t prove anything because as a truck driver, this is part of the truck equipment that is used to tie down loads,” Matthews said. “But the question remains: Is this the same rope that he was hanged with?”
The family also has questions about the timeline.
The video shows Magee buying the rope on Sept. 10. His body was found on Sept. 11 about six miles from Walmart, near a tractor repair shop, CBS 17 reports.
Candice Matthews, left, has become a spokesperson for the Magee family. Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame, right, has tried to calm rumors that Magee was lynched
“The family continues to feel that the sheriff’s department is not transparent and clear. They feel that there was foul play that happened to their loved one, and they want answers. They want transparency. They want accountability and they want justice,” Matthews said.
Magee’s family has enlisted the help of national civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Lee Merritt.
“To date, authorities have provided us with no evidence that this young man, who has no history of mental illness, committed suicide,” Daniels said in a statement.
Magee’s family and their attorneys maintain that he did not suffer from any form of mental illness
A banner is hung at the University of Illinois at Chicago on September 14, days after his death
The case gained attention on social media after one of Magee’s cousins posted a video on TikTok criticizing the sheriff’s office for not being transparent and “not allowing his mother to identify the body” due to COVID-19.
The sheriff’s office told DailyMail.com that Magee’s mother was never denied the opportunity to identify her son’s body.
The cousin of the cousin original video about the topic has been viewed almost 5 million times on TikTok. In a next videoshe continued to maintain that she was convinced that Magee had not died by her own hand.
We didn’t feel that [the case] was thoroughly investigated, and [we were] “Given the collision,” she said.
“I didn’t say the police did anything, I didn’t say a specific person did anything, but someone did something. We don’t believe he did this to himself. So, we have every right to feel how we feel as a family.”