The fact that I could access this image for so long after I deleted the folder reinforced that thought. My thought was that I made the image in a separate location and didn't need the original folder anymore. Depending on how many items you want to delete, multiple file paths may show up in Terminal.
Drag the highlighted files into the Trash. If you want to remove everything, press Command + A to highlight all files and folders instantly. I thought once you made a disk image, it "reserved" a section of your HDD, sort of like a partition and you didn't need the original file anymore because it was copied over. Select the files you want to delete while holding down the Command key. I deleted the folder because I didn't/don't understand how disk images work apparently. Maybe it was referencing the folder from the trash, I dunno? Other shortcuts include: Click and hold the Trash icon on the Dock, and choose Empty Trash. If you don’t like the prompt, deselect that checkbox. If Show warning before emptying the Trash is selected in the window shown above, you’ll be prompted to confirm the deletion. The second way is that you can go to the 'Finder' menu and get the trash folder on Mac by inputting '/. To empty the Trash manually, choose Finder > Empty Trash. The first way is to double click the trash bin icon on the Dock and then you can open it. The Trash on Mac, is a particular folder to save files or documents that are deleted or removed by the user, but not yet permanently erased from the file system. How this worked I don't know but I was able to mount the image for over a year after deleting the original folder. To recover deleted files from Mac trash, you should find and access trash on Mac. Automatically empty the Deleted Items folder. After the folder was deleted, I could still get to the disk image just by opening disk utility. In the folder list, right-click the Deleted Items folder or the Trash folder, and then select Empty Folder. The actual folder that was used to make the disk image was deleted, so I can't just click on the file to mount the image because it doesn't exist anymore. To search from a Finder window, use the search field in the corner of the window: When you select a search result, its location appears at the bottom of the window.