Authorities 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 from a Walmart a day before his body was discovered.
The video was taken on September 10 and showed Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver from Illinois, walking up to a self-checkout station with a bundle rope in his hand, police said.
The young man was found dead the next day, sitting down near the base of a tree with rope wrapped around his neck and the other end attached to the tree, CBS 17 reported.
Content creators on social media have steered massive publicity to the case by labeling his death a 'lynching'. While Magee's family hasn't called his death a lynching, they have drawn on the existing cultural awareness surrounding Emmett Till, who was killed in 1955 by two white men for supposedly whistling at a white woman.
Police previously insisted Magee 'wasn't lynched' as the case gained increasing attention last week.
The Vance County Sheriff's Office released footage showing Javion Magee buying a bundle of blue rope in a Walmart located in Henderson, North Carolina
Magee is seen here pulling out a card to pay for the rope
Magee tosses 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
The new video shows Magee paying for the blue rope with a card before walking out of the store.
Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame told ABC 11 that his office believes the rope he bought was used in his death, but Magee's family is still not satisfied with the investigation.
'There's been information put out there that there's a lynching, there is not a lynching,' Brame said earlier.
'The young man was not dangling from a tree. He was not swinging from a tree. The rope was wrapped around his neck. It was not a noose. There was not a knot in the rope, so therefore, it was not a lynching here in Vance County.'
DailyMail.com has contacted the sheriff's office multiple times for more information about the circumstances of Magee's death.
No cause of death had been determined as of Monday.
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 to a Walmart distribution center before buying the rope, adding that the rope he bought could have had another purpose.
'The family still believes that this video doesn't prove nothing because as a truck driver, this is part of the trucking equipment that's used for tying down loads,' Matthews said. 'But the question still remains, is this the same rope that he was hung from?'
The family also has questions about the timeline.
The video shows Magee buying the rope during the day on September 10. His body was discovered on September 11 around six miles away from the Walmart near a tractor repair business, CBS 17 reported.
Candice Matthews, left, has become the spokesperson for the Magee family. Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame, right, has sought to quiet rumors that Magee was lynched
'The family still feels that the sheriff's department is not being transparent and not being clear. They feel that it's foul play that has 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 retained the counsel of national civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Lee Merritt.
'As of today, the authorities haven't shown us anything proving that this young man with no history of mental illness took his life,' Daniels said in a statement.
Magee's family and their lawyers insist that he didn't have any kind of mental illness
A banner is hung near the University of Illinois in Chicago on September 14, days after his death
This case gained attention on social media after one of Magee's cousins posted a video on TikTok slamming the sheriff's office for not being transparent and 'not allowing his mom to identify the body' because of 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's original video on the subject has gotten nearly 5 million views on TikTok. In a subsequent video, she doubled down on her belief that Magee didn't die by his own hand.
'We didn't feel that [the case] was getting a thorough investigation, and [we were] given the run-around,' she said.
'I didn't say the police did anything, I didn't say any specific person did anything, but somebody did something. We don't believe that he did this to himself. So, we have every right to feel how we feel as a family.'
