- Rasheem Carter was seen on a trail camera shirtless on the day he was reported missing.
- The Black man's mother told Insider she believes the image shows Carter was "running for his life."
- A local sheriff says no one else was with Carter in the footage and that there's no evidence yet he was murdered.
Rasheem Carter — the young Black man whose family believes he was murdered late last year — was captured on a trail camera in the Mississippi woods shirtless and carrying what appears to be a large branch on the day he was reported missing.
The mother of the 25-year-old man whose remains were found a month after he disappeared told Insider on Tuesday that the wildlife camera image of her son shows that "something was wrong" and that he was "running for his life."
"You could see there are bruises on him," Carter's mother, Tiffany Carter, told Insider of the October 2, 2022 image with a time stamp of 4:32 p.m. "When I see that picture, I know my son was somewhere struggling, somewhere running for his life."
"I really believe he was chased there," Tiffany said.
Investigators provided the image to Rasheem's family for verification about a week before his remains were found on November 2, 2022, just south of Taylorsville, Mississippi, in a wooded area, about 300 yards away from where he was seen in the photo, according to Tiffany and police.
"The picture shows something is not right," Tiffany told Insider. "Something transpired."
Rasheem's cousin, Tarsha Clark, told Insider she believes Rasheem was "hiding" at the time the image was captured. "
"I think it was a struggle and he was trying to protect himself. He was hiding," Clark said.
Rasheem's family has alleged that his death was a modern-day "lynching," and said the father from Fayette, Mississippi, warned in a phone call to his mother that he was being chased by white men in trucks on October 1, 2022.
Smith County Sheriff Joel Houston, whose department is handling the investigation into Rasheem's death, insisted to Insider on Tuesday that investigators have not yet found any evidence that proves Carter was murdered.
Houston added that while cops haven't seen anything to indicate he was murdered, "everything is still on the table, and anything is possible until we have completed the case, turned over every rock, every leaf, and find every possible answer there is to find."
Rasheem's mother reported her son missing to police in Laurel, Mississippi, on October 2, 2022 — the day the deer camera captured him in the woods.
The family's attorney, Ben Crump, told reporters this week that an independent autopsy revealed that Rasheem's head was "severed" from his body and that his vertebrae and spinal cord were found in a different location.
Other body parts are still missing, Crump said.
"What that tells us is that this was a nefarious act," said Crump. "This was an evil act. Somebody murdered Rasheem Carter. And we can not let them get away with this."
Houston told Insider that animals could have "very easily" torn apart Rasheem's body after he died.
The Carter family has alleged that police were covering up what happened to Carter and called for a federal investigation, but Houston urged, "There is nothing being covered up. There is nothing being swept under the rug."
"There's nothing to hide," Houston said.
When asked about the deer camera image showing Rasheem shirtless, Houston told Insider that an argument can be made that the "bruises" on the man are actually "shadows."
"He's the only one on the camera," Houston said, explaining that investigators reviewed all the deer cam footage from the day he was spotted on it. "It doesn't show anybody else present."
Houston 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," Houston said, noting that investigators are still waiting on search warrants from technology companies that would help "rule out anybody being with him."
Tiffany told Insider that she has only seen that one image from the deer trail camera and that she has not been shown the entire footage.
She said her son had no medical issues and was a "healthy 25-year-old man."