‘Grossly premature’ to call Javion Magee’s death a suicide, civil rights attorneys say
Attorneys for the family of Javion Magee said Wednesday that no one yet knows how the 21-year-old trucker died before being found with a broken neck and tied to a tree in Henderson.
But during a press conference Wednesday, they criticized sheriff’s investigators for quickly calling it suicide while questions remain, and they vowed to press for answers in the death some family members still suspect was a lynching.
”For any suggestion that it was suicide, anybody stating it was a suicide, would be grossly premature,” said Harry Daniels, national civil rights attorney. “We do know a young, Black man was hanging from a tree in North Carolina.”
Sheriff’s deputies found Magee sitting at the base of a tree in Henderson with a blue rope around his neck on Sept. 11, according to search warrants.
An unidentified caller told 911 dispatchers he had been mowing grass in the area with some other men when he saw a man who “hung himself in a tree.”
Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame said Wednesday Magee’s autopsy showed no signs of defensive wounds or physical abuse. Toxicology tests are pending.
Suspicions Magee had been lynched arose soon after when a woman posted a TikTok video saying she was Magee’s cousin and accused law enforcement of concealing facts while calling the death a suicide.
“We obviously don’t believe that,” the woman says in the post, asking others to share the story. A flurry of social media posts soon followed, calling Magee’s death a lynching, which Vance County Sheriff’s Curtis Brame has called untrue, and national news outlets picked up the story.
“There is not a lynching,” Brame told The N&O’s newsgathering partner, ABC 11. “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,” Brame said.
Video of Javion Magee buying blue rope from Walmart
On Monday, the Vance sheriff’s office released videos of Magee buying a blue rope at Walmart on the same day he died. A timeline released Wednesday showed he did so just past 6 p.m. on Sept. 10, the day before his body was found.
Video footage also shows him giving something to a homeless person at the Wal-Mart, the sheriff’s office said Wednesday. After interviewing the homeless person, investigators learned Magee gave him $228.
The videos show Magee paying for the rope and tossing it back and forth in his hands while leaving the store and driving away. Other surveillance videos show his truck traveling on Vance Mill Road and making a left turn into T& R Tractor and Trailer Repair.
A man wearing the same clothes Magee wore earlier is then seen walking alone and carrying a white bag in the direction of where deputies found his body.
Magee was discovered approximately 16 hours after he purchased the rope, which investigators said was wrapped around his neck 11 times and secured to a tree branch.
Timeline of events leading to trucker’s death
Magee was a long-haul trucker working out of Chicago, and he came to Vance County while driving a delivery route. He planned on visiting cousins in Houston soon after.
”I don’t know too many gainfully employed, happy 21-year-olds who drive to Vance County and kill themselves,” said Lee Merritt, also a national civil rights attorney, during Wednesday’s press conference.
A timetable of events leading to Magee’s death was released Wednesday.
But while the family got a call reporting his death as a suicide and did not get a chance to see pictures or identify the body until Wednesday, they now know a fuller picture of events.
Daniels said Magee tried to check into a Hampton Inn in Henderson but found it full.
Instead, he stayed at the trailer repair yard about a half-mile from the Walmart, where other truckers were staying alongside him.
Daniels said he did not know how many were potentially parked with Magee.
He added a trucker sleeping in the middle of nowhere might have many uses for a rope, explaining the Walmart purchase.
”As a seasoned trucker,” Daniels said, “it’s a lot of reasonable explanations for that.”
Javion Magee gave homeless person $228, had rope coiled around his neck, sheriff says
Supporters chant, ‘Say his name!’
Daniels stressed that neither attorneys nor the family are pointing fingers at this point, but he did not rule out legal action in the future depending on what the investigation shows.
He said pictures show Magee attached to a branch 7 or 8 feet high, but he said the young man was killed “not in the manner you would see in the ‘60s, or the ‘20s or ‘30s.”
As the attorney spoke, a crowd of several dozen supporters held signs reading “Was he lynched,” chanting “Say his name!”
Magee’s parents shaken by evidence
Magee’s parents, shaken by the evidence they had seen for the first time Wednesday, spoke briefly at the press conference, giving thanks for support and prayers.
Kori Magee, Javion’s father, said his son followed him into the trucking trade despite seeing ups and downs in the business, and he was “very competitive” and “wanted to put in work.”
“If I could tap into him,” he said, “I would say he’s wanted this country to come together. If there wasn’t a divide, this wouldn’t have happened.”
