A young black man died in a rural area of Vance County, North Carolina, but the media has apparently used details of his death to advance a racial narrative.
Around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Vance County deputies were notified about a body located near Vanco Mill Road just outside Henderson, North Carolina, a city of 15,000 residents about 45 miles north of Raleigh.
‘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.’
Though the deceased man had no ID on him, investigators later learned that his name was Javion Magee, a 21-year-old truck driver from the Chicago area. He was found sitting with his back against a “medium-sized” tree and a rope around his neck. The other end of the rope was affixed to the tree.
The detail about the rope sparked many sensational headlines. “Black man found dead with rope around his neck, NC sheriff says,” read the headline from WCNC. “Black man found dead against tree with rope around his neck in NC: ‘Not a lynching,’ sheriff says,” said another from ABC11.
The News & Observer went even further and referenced lynching in its headline, even as the outlet noted Magee’s death may in fact be a suicide: “As suspicions swell that Black man was lynched in NC, warrant outlines evidence of suicide.”
Unfortunately, the evidence released so far does suggest Magee may have taken his own life. Sheriff Curtis Brame told ABC11 that Magee had driven a truckload to a Walmart distribution center hours before his death and then apparently gone to a Walmart store to purchase several items, including the rope later found draped around his neck.
“There’s been information put out there that there’s a lynching in Vance County,” Brame said. “There is not a lynching in Vance County. 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.”
Brame, who is black, further insisted that Magee’s body did not appear to be “disfigured in any form or fashion” when it was found. He told ABC11 that other evidence, such as surveillance footage from Walmart, had not yet been released as the investigation into Magee’s death continues.
While Brame stopped short of stating that Magee’s death was a suicide, he said that foul play was not suspected.
A preliminary autopsy report released on Friday was similarly inconclusive about suicide. However, the medical examiner did not find any obvious signs of defensive wounds or other scarring, only signs of hemorrhaging around the soft area of Magee’s neck, Brame told ABC11.
A toxicology report remains pending. Blaze News left a message for Sheriff Brame seeking more information, but that message was not returned.
Candice Matthews, described by the TRiiBE as “a civil rights activist and state chair for the Texas Democratic Black Caucus” who claims to represent Magee’s family, called on federal law enforcement to investigate the incident as a “hate crime.”
“We demand the Department of Justice to come in and investigate this. We demand the FBI to come in and investigate this as a hate crime,” she said.
“In my opinion, it’s a hate crime because this young man had no indication of suicidal ideation,” she said, according to WCNC.
Matthews also claimed that even though no official cause of death has been determined, the Vance County Sheriff’s Office told Magee’s mother and stepfather that he died by suicide.
“A lot of this stuff does not pass the smell test, and that’s a problem,” Matthews continued. “The entire family is completely mortified and they are hurt, they are. They have a lot of questions, and they just want to know what happened to their loved one.”
Other locals likewise suspect racism may have played a role in Magee’s death. “I mean, honestly, I think we have to acknowledge that, No. 1, we do live in the South, and there’s a deep history of racism and racist acts. And so people are obviously concerned about that,” Khalil Gay of Henderson told ABC11.
An X user account named britteney Black rose kapri, who apparently wrote a book entitled “Black Queer Hoe,” similarly indicated that Magee had been “lynched.” “A Black man was lynched in North Carolina this week. A Black man was lynched in North Carolina this week,” kapri wrote on Wednesday.
As of Monday afternoon, kapri’s post has over 99,000 likes and 3.7 million impressions.
Brame expressed his condolences to the family but insisted that everyone needs to exercise patience and wait for the facts to come out. “Stay out of the rumor mills,” he advised.
KLLM Transport Services, the company which employed Magee at the time of his death, issued a statement about Magee’s passing.
“We’d like to express our deepest condolences to the family. Javion was a good employee, and we’re all saddened by the loss. We’re cooperating with authorities in this investigation,” said Booth Veazey, director of safety at KLLM Transport Services.
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Lynching, Racism, South, Suicide, Sheriff curtis brame, Politics
