Jackson Police Investigate Fortune Death as Homicide

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney is scheduled to provide an update Friday on the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, whose body was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home on Road of Remembrance in west Jackson, Mississippi, in late July or early August. Police have treated the case as a potential homicide from the outset, but the official cause and manner of death remain pending because the State Medical Examiner’s Office has not released results from an autopsy completed about four weeks ago. Authorities have questioned a 65-year-old nearby resident who had argued with Fortune shortly before her death; he has not been charged in connection with her death but was arrested on an unrelated felony firearm-possession charge. Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, has said her daughter was not suicidal and believes she was killed, but not in a hate crime. The case has drawn community and national attention because Fortune was Black, the circumstances of her death, and the region’s history of racial terror and lynchings. Officials have cautioned against speculation, have not established a hate-crime motive or linked the death to a series of incidents, and Fortune’s family and local officials have called for greater transparency.