- Rasheem Carter autopsy revealed disturbing details about his death, which has led his family to demand a federal investigation.
- Carter was reported missing on October 2, 2022, after he sought help from the police and frantically called his mother to say that white men in three trucks were pursuing him.
- On November 2, 2022, authorities found his skeletal remains, including his skull and some vertebrae.
- The Smith County Sheriff’s Department initially stated that they had no reason to believe foul play was involved, although the case was under investigation.
- On Monday, Carter’s family and their attorney, Ben Crump, slammed local authorities for stonewalling them for more than four months and for the initial determination.
The family of Rasheem Carter, a 25-year-old Black man who was found dead in a wooded area south of Taylorsville, Mississippi, after being chased by white men hurling racial slurs, is demanding a federal investigation into his death.
Carter was reported missing on October 2, 2022, after he sought help from the police and frantically called his mother to say that white men in three trucks were pursuing him.
On November 2, 2022, authorities found his skeletal remains, including his skull and some vertebrae.
The Smith County Sheriff’s Department initially stated that they had no reason to believe foul play was involved, although the case was under investigation.
On Monday, Carter’s family and their attorney, Ben Crump, slammed local authorities for stonewalling them for more than four months and for the initial determination.
They believe that Carter was the victim of a brutal hate crime and urged the Justice Department to take over the investigation as a civil rights case.
Crump revealed photographs of Carter’s skeletal remains and stated that he believes Carter’s head was severed from his body, and his spinal cord was found in another location away from his head.
Carter’s front teeth were missing from the top, and bottom rows, which his family believed indicates that he was assaulted before he died.
The Laurel Police Department, which put out Carter’s missing person report, worked on the case early on after Carter’s family asked for assistance.
The department pulled some phone records and may have interviewed some of Carter’s co-workers, but it declined to elaborate further.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is assisting the sheriff in its probe, but the FBI is not currently involved in the case.
Three members of Carter’s family said authorities told them that wild animals may have torn his body apart.
However, Carter’s mother said that her son was lucid about the threats he faced during their final phone calls and that he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol and had no history of mental illness.
She had doubted her son’s death was an accident even before she saw where his remains were found.
Carter, a welder from Fayette, Mississippi, was in Taylorsville, about 100 miles away from home, working a short-term contracting gig.
His mother said he was saving money to reopen his seafood restaurant, which closed during the pandemic and which was named after his 7-year-old daughter, Cali.
While he was at the job site in October, Carter had a disagreement with at least one co-worker and fled, fearing for his life, his mother said.
Carter’s family and friends led their own search parties until his remains were discovered.
His mother pledged to continue fighting for answers, saying, “They thought this was going to be a child no one cared anything about. They’re clearly mistaken. Because he was somebody.”
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