Rasheem Carter: Family shares trail camera photo of bruised victim, claims he was attacked by 'lynch mob'
Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers' discretion advised.
TAYLORSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI: The family of Rasheem Carter, a 25-year-old Black man from Mississippi who went missing last year on October 2, 2022, after claiming he was being chased by white men in his community and was found dead in the woods a month later in November, believes he was the target of a lynch mob. Attorney Carlos Moore at a press conference said, “He was dutifully and gainfully employed, just trying to make a living for his young child, and ends up dead, chased by what we believe to be a white supremacist, a lynch mob.”
Rasheem's mother, Tiffany Carter said the day before Rasheem went missing, he sought help from the Taylorsville Police Department twice. She said, "three truckloads of White guys [were] trying to kill him. [Police] did not help him. He asked for help, but they did not help him," reports Inside Edition.
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'This is not a natural death'
The family's attorney Ben Crump said, "This is not a natural death. This represents a young man who was killed. His head was severed from his body. His vertebrate, his spinal cord, was in another spot they discovered away from his severed head. They have recently found remains that they believe are also Rasheem Carter's but in another part where he went missing. What that tells us is this was a nefarious act, an evil act. Someone murdered Rasheem Carter, and we cannot let them get away with this."
We NEED a federal investigation into the killing of Rasheem Carter! An independent autopsy revealed his death was NOT due to natural causes! Rasheem was ignored after seeking help from police, and no progress has been made to find his killers — his family deserves justice! pic.twitter.com/ENbGEHCyHZ
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) March 15, 2023
"He was dutifully and gainfully employed, just trying to make a living for his young child, and ends up dead, chased by what we believe to be a white supremacist, a lynch mob,” attorney Carlos Moore added. Talking about police, Ben said, "Because they failed to act, what we have is a Mississippi lynching. A Mississippi lynching in 2022. America, you cannot turn your head away. We need the highest levels of law enforcement to administer justice for Rasheem Carter as if he was your child."
Tommy Cox, a spokesperson for the Laurel Police Department told Inside Edition, "This didn't happen here. He didn't go missing here. We followed up with other jurisdictions and we put in work on a missing persons case to try and help the family out while he worked in Taylorsville which is 20-something miles from here in another jurisdiction. He never contacted the Laurel Police. We never had face-to-face contact with him. This was treated as a missing persons case until we handed it off to another jurisdiction when he was found."
'I know my son was somewhere struggling'
A trail camera captured an October 2, 2022 image with a time stamp of 4.32 pm of Rasheem, who graduated from Hinds Community College in Utica in 2016 with a degree in welding and cutting technology, with his shirt off and carrying a tree limb in a wooded area near Taylorsville. The mother told Insider, who shared the image, on Wednesday, March 15, that the picture of her son shows that "something was wrong" and that he was "running for his life." She said, "You could see there are bruises on him. When I see that picture, I know my son was somewhere struggling, somewhere running for his life. I really believe he was chased there."
Smith County Sheriff Joel Houston, whose department is handling the investigation into Rasheem's death, said, "He's the only one on the camera. It doesn't show anybody else present." And added, "At this point, we're just trying to rule out any possibility of anybody being present in his last time alive. The evidence we have right now is not showing anybody with him. He also added that the investigators are still waiting on search warrants from technology companies that would help "rule out anybody being with him."