The Hinds County coroner has identified Tasia Fortune as the woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson earlier this week. Jackson police have not released details about how Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman, ended up in the manner she was discovered Monday, which evoked memories of the South’s history of lynching.
The coroner’s office said her family has been notified. Her body was sent to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. LaToni Fortune, her sister, told Mississippi Today on Wednesday that she last saw Tasia last month during a visit to Kentucky. “She just comes back to Kentucky and visits us or we’ll go to Jackson and visit her,” she said.
It is unclear how long Fortune was behind the vacant house before neighbors spotted her and called police at the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, a predominantly Black neighborhood in west Jackson. Jackson Police Department Public Information Officer Tommie Brown declined to release an incident report, citing an active investigation.
The case bears similarities to the September death of Trey Reed, a Black student at Delta State University, who was found hanging on campus. An independent autopsy on Reed has not been released, and his family has expressed frustration over the lack of information.
In a related context, the family of Nolan Xavier Wells, who died after traveling to Horn Island on July 4, has also called for transparency. Wells’ body was found two days later off the coast. An autopsy by the state has yet to determine his cause of death, and the family has not received further updates from their attorney, Ben Crump, who also represents other civil rights cases.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
