The family of Javion MaGee is calling for answers after his body was found in North Carolina in September 2024 with a rope around his neck. (Courtesy of Harry Daniels, Lee Merritt, and Jason Keith)
This story contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
The death of Javion MaGee, a 21-year-old truck Illinois driver, has been officially ruled a suicide.
The autopsy report from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed a preliminary investigation that there was no foul play. MaGee used a blue rope to hang himself on Sept. 11, 2024, the report confirms. He was seen on surveillance video purchasing rope from a Walmart. His body was found against a tree, not hanging. A call to 911 reporting his death was also previously released.
The next day, a young woman who identified herself as MaGee’s older cousin took to social media to demand answers from law enforcement and the county’s medical examiner. She said the coroner’s office was giving MaGee’s mother a “hard time” with allowing her to identify the body because of the state it’s in.
According to a report released last month, MaGee’s body was “clad in two black shoes, two white socks, black shorts, a white T-shirt, and a yellow metal necklace. Loosely adherent debris covers the body including dirt, sticks, and leaves.”
MaGee, from Aurora, Illinois, did not have any alcohol, common drugs, or common medications that caused or contributed to his death, according to the autopsy and toxicology reports.
“This is very devastating for my family,” MaGee’s cousin said in the viral video.
Capital B has reached out to the family’s attorney for comment on the autopsy report’s findings.
Candice Matthews, a family spokeswoman, told the TRiiBE last year that the video from Walmart doesn’t prove anything. “As a truck driver, this is part of the equipment used for loads. … This is part of his job and part of the equipment that’s used to tie down loads,” Matthews said.
The idea of her little cousin dying by suicide, which she says was a narrative given by police, is something “we obviously don’t believe,” she said. As rumors quickly spread on social media, the family has been left with more questions than answers. It’s a feeling many Black people have every time there is a report of another Black person found hanging or dead under suspicious circumstances, especially in a Southern state — it evokes the painful history of lynching in America.
An independent autopsy has been planned by the family to compare findings, the family attorney told WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham after the final autopsy report was released.
“We’ve heard stories like this time and again, from Emmett Till in Mississippi to Edward Roach in Roxboro, North Carolina, and we’re not going to let Javion MaGee’s story get swept under the rug,” Lee Merritt, one of the attorneys representing MaGee’s family, said in a press release on Sept. 13, 2024. “This is 2024, not 1924.”
MaGee’s death quickly drew concerns from civil rights activists, especially since North Carolina has dozens of known hate and anti-government groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yet, Sheriff Curtis R. Brame, who is Black, seemed to dismiss the possibility of a lynching in an interview with WTVD-TV because of the way the rope was tied around MaGee’s neck.
“There was not a noose, there was not a knot in the rope,” Brame said at the beginning of the interview.
“There’s been information put out there that there’s a lynching in Vance County. 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,” Brame said minutes later to the TV news outlet.
“It was not a noose. It was not a knot in the rope,” he repeated and added, “So, therefore, it was not a lynching here in Vance County.”
The autopsy report did identify a knot, but determined “there are no concerns for foul play.” The rope was tied around MaGee’s neck “eleven times with the remainder loosely bunched and coiled on top of the body. A knot is present on the left posterior neck,” according to the report.
It’s unclear if MaGee was left- or right-handed. The report didn’t indicate any injuries to either hand, and his fingernails were preserved for evidence.
The attorneys representing the family and civil rights leader Bishop William Barber II have said the way MaGee was found needs to be taken more seriously and the South’s history can’t be ignored.
“We must have truth transparency in this matter,” said Barber in the Sept. 13, 2024, joint press release with Merritt and attorneys Harry Daniels and Jason Keith. “Hanging is not a form of death that can be easily dismissed, particularly here in the South, where it has been used as a weapon of terror against Black families for generations.”
The perception of lynching has shifted since the days when postcards depicted brutalized Black people of all ages hanging from trees by nooses, particularly following Till’s 1955 murder by a racist mob. Since then, the idea of lynching has expanded to include not only historical acts of racial terror, but also various forms of racially motivated violence and injustices.
“To find somebody hanging from a tree, it should provoke a strong response from whatever investigative body that is examining the case, given the country’s history with lynching,” Keith Taylor, a retired assistant commissioner with the New York City Police Department, told Capital B in a previous interview after Yolna Lobrin’s death in Orlando, Florida, in September 2023.
The post Was Javion MaGee Lynched? An N.C. Medical Examiner Report Confirms Earlier Finding of Suicide. appeared first on Capital B News.