The Jackson Police Department is investigating the death of a 29-year-old woman found hanging from a tree in west Jackson last month as a homicide, Chief RaShall Brackney told the City Council during its Tuesday meeting.
Brackney said an autopsy on the woman, Tasia Fortune, was completed four weeks ago.
“To date, we have not received the outcomes of that autopsy,” Brackney told Jackson City Council members.
“However, the Jackson Police Department has been investigating this case from day one as a homicide until we hear otherwise from the medical examiner’s office,” she said.
Brackney’s statements were in response to Councilman Kenneth Stokes and a letter from Fortune’s mother, who lamented the lack of information about her daughter’s death and what she said was the lack of communication from investigators.
“I’m not sure what you can do, but if you need me to present I will travel to Jackson so my voice is heard. I will attend anything I need to attend,” Christy Spivey, who lives in Kentucky, wrote in her letter, which was read out loud during the meeting.
Brackney said that investigators have been in constant contact with Spivey and her estranged husband.
In early August, Fortune’s body was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant house at the 500 block of Road of Remembrance in a mostly Black neighborhood in west Jackson. The manner in which she was found – a Black woman hanging in a place with a history of racial terror lynchings – drew national attention.
Authorities have identified a person of interest, who was arrested on an unrelated gun charge.
Stokes, who shared the letter, said, “Hanging is an ugly, ugly part of our past that we never ever want to come back again.”
Spivey previously told Mississippi Today that she believes her daughter was killed but was not the victim of a hate crime. She insisted Fortune was not suicidal.
Stokes previously wrote to the U.S. Attorney Baxter Kruger, and U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, both Mississippi Republicans, requesting federal assistance in the case. He also called for answers at a press conference outside City Hall on Sunday.
