NC sheriff releases videos showing truck driver buying rope from Walmart before death

The Vance County Sheriff’s Office released videos showing Javion Magee buying rope at Walmart before he was found dead by a tree in Henderson with a rope around his neck on Sept. 11.

The high profile death investigation has drawn national news coverage after social media posts raised suspicions that the Black truck driver had been killed in Vance County.

The five videos show Magee walking up to a Walmart self checkout, paying with a credit card and leaving the store with a blue rope and a receipt. As he exits through the glass automatic doors, he tosses the wrapped rope back and forth in his hands.

The last video shows Magee walking to his white truck, which doesn’t have a trailer, parked in the back of the Walmart parking lot, getting in and driving away.

Suspicions about his death started circulating after after a woman in a TikTok video posted Thursday said Magee was her cousin and she and his family are concerned as law enforcement aren’t being transparent about the death investigation.

The post at the account scottieprimpin said that the author’s 21-year-old cousin from the Chicago area was working as a truck driver in North Carolina when law enforcement told the family that Magee hung himself.

“We obviously don’t believe that,” the woman says in the post that asks others to share Magee’s story.

Following, dozens of social media accounts shared information indicating Magee was lynched, which Vance County’s sheriff said Friday was not true.

On Saturday, a spokesperson for the family released a statement saying the family still suspected foul play and is concerned about the Sheriff’s Office transparency, ABC11 reported.

On Tuesday morning, Vance Sheriff Curtis Brame said the the State Bureau of Investigation is involved in the death investigation. Brame also plans to send out a press release later today with the latest information on the investigation, he said

A search warrant released Friday says deputies found Magee around 10 a.m. on Sept. 11 sitting at the base of a tree with a blue rope around his neck.

The warrant said videos shows Magee, alone, buying a rope from Walmart around 6:20 p.m. on Sept. 10. He then went to a Hampton Inn, which he left around 6:36 p.m.

Other surveillance footage showed Magee, still alone, purchasing a wrapper at a local smoke shop. Surveillance footage from a Shell gas station then shows the truck traveling on Vance Mill Road, making a left turn into T& R Tractor and Trailer Repair.

A man, who is wearing the same clothes that Magee had on, is later seen leaving the white trailer and walking alone with a white bag toward the direction of where Magee’s body was found the next day.

The footage does not show him returning, the warrant states.

This is a developing story that will be updated as more information is available.

Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.