Tasia Fortune, 29, was found hanging from a tree in the abandoned lot of a Jackson house on 3 August. For a month she lay in limbo as police failed to confirm that the case was treated as a homicide.
Christy Spivey, who last saw her daughter alive on 26 July, told the BBC she is still waiting for an official answer. She says her repeated pleas to the police have been ignored, and she “doesn’t know what the hold up is.”
(Spivey’s webcam self‑portrait at the family reunion, 2023)
On Tuesday, Police Chief RaShall Brackney publicly announced that the department “has been investigating this case from day one as a homicide.” He added that the investigation would continue “at the highest appropriate level while we await the medical examiner’s findings.”
The medical examiner’s office remains silent, and the official cause of death is still pending. In the meantime, a petition on a popular platform has amassed over 50,000 signatures, demanding an independent probe of state Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner and calling for an FBI inquiry into the circumstances of Fortune’s death.
County Councilman Kenneth Stokes expressed frustration at the lack of police presence, noting that he had visited the abandoned home where Fortune lived multiple times without seeing officers. He said he has written to both the federal prosecution office and the FBI but has yet to receive a reply.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has also urged federal intervention, labeling the incident a “possible case of modern‑day lynching” and referencing Mississippi’s “appalling historical reputation of violent terrorism against black Americans.”
The death is the third in Mississippi in less than a year where individuals were discovered hanging from trees—two other cases involved a black male and a white female, both ruled suicide, though a mother has challenged one of those rulings. Nationwide, similar incidents have occurred, with four more black Americans found hanged in North Carolina this year alone, three of which were ruled suicide and one awaiting an autopsy.
(Image of Tasia Fortune smiling in a family handout photo, 2023)
Spivey, who decided to bury her daughter after the funeral, hopes new findings may eventually necessitate an exhume. The case has also increased tension on Jackson State University’s campus, where student leaders warn that the fear “is that you could be next” in what is supposed to be a safe environment. The mother's enduring plea remains the same: she wants answers, no matter how long it takes.
