Last October, Rasheem Carter told Taylorsville, Mississippi police that he had been chased by truckloads of white men yelling racial slurs at him.
Days later, Carter was officially reported missing.
His remains were found a month later, just 1 mile south of the town. In a statement posted to Facebook at the time, the Smith County Sheriff’s Office, where Taylorsville is located, said that there was “no reason to believe” that foul play was involved.
Months after Carter’s disappearance, the state Bureau of Investigation and local police still maintain that an investigation is ongoing, but have provided his family with scant information. His family thinks that Carter, a 25-year-old Black man, was murdered in cold blood and found decapitated—and that police inaction put Carter in danger and is now stalling his family’s quest for justice.
On Monday, civil rights attorney Ben Crump stood with Carter’s mother Tiffany outside of a federal court in Jackson and displayed photos from an independent autopsy, which he said showed that Carter’s head had been severed from his body and his spinal cord had been found unattached to the rest of his body.
“This was a nefarious act. This was an evil act,” Crump said. “Someone murdered Rasheem Carter. And we cannot let them get away with this.”
Hellbound and Down 