Authorities have released a 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, purchasing a rope at a Walmart a day before his body was discovered.
The video was taken on Sept. 10 and shows Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver from Illinois, walking toward a self-checkout station with a rope in his hand, police said.
The young man was found dead the next day, sitting near the base of a tree with a rope wrapped 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 released images showing Javion Magee purchasing a package of blue string at a Walmart located in Henderson, North Carolina.
Here you can see Magee pulling out a card to pay for the rope.
Magee throws the rope into the air as he walks out of the store. He would be found dead the next day about six miles from the Walmart.
The new video shows Magee paying for the blue string with a card before leaving the store.
Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame said ABC 11 that his office believes the rope he purchased was used in her death, but Magee’s family is still not satisfied with the investigation.
“There has been information that there is a lynching, there is no lynching,” Brame said earlier.
“The young man was not hanging from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree. The rope was wrapped around his neck. It was not a noose. There was no knot in the rope, therefore, it was not a lynching here in Vance County.”
DailyMail.com has reached out to the sheriff’s office several times for more information about the circumstances of Magee’s death.
As of Monday, the cause of death had not been determined.
A spokeswoman for the Magees, Candice Matthews, told DailyMail.com that the family still has questions.
Matthews said Magee dropped off a load from his truck at a Walmart distribution center before purchasing the rope, adding that the rope he purchased could have had another purpose.
“The family still believes this video doesn’t prove anything because, as a truck driver, this is part of the equipment used to tie down loads,” Matthews said. “But the question remains: Is this the same rope he was hung from?”
The family also has questions about the timeline.
The video shows Magee purchasing the rope during the day on Sept. 10. His body was discovered on Sept. 11 about six miles from the Walmart, near a tractor repair business, CBS 17 reported.
Candice Matthews, left, has become a spokeswoman for the Magee family. Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame, right, has tried to quell rumors that Magee was lynched.
“The family still feels like the sheriff’s department is not being transparent and clear. They feel like what happened to their loved one is a crime and they want answers. They want transparency. They want accountability and they want justice,” Matthews said.
Magee’s family has retained the advice of national civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Lee Merritt.
“To this day, authorities have shown us nothing to prove that this young man with no history of mental illness took his own life,” Daniels said in a statement.
Magee’s family and attorneys insist he did not suffer from any mental illness.
A banner hangs near the University of Illinois at Chicago on Sept. 14, days after his death.
The case gained attention on social media after one of Magee’s cousins posted a TikTok video 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 Original video on the topic has garnered nearly 5 million views on TikTok. a later videoShe doubled down on her belief that Magee did not die by his own hand.
“We didn’t feel like (the case) was receiving a thorough investigation and (we) were given the runaround,” he said.
“I didn’t say the police did anything, I didn’t say any one person did anything, but someone did something. We don’t believe he did this to himself. So we have every right to feel the way we do as a family.”
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