Police in Jackson, Mississippi, have made their first arrest in the case of a black woman found dead and hanged from a tree, and could soon take more people into custody.
“That arrest today is an important development in this investigation, but it is not the conclusion,” Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said on Friday. “This case remains active.”
The mystery of Tasia Fortune’s death has been a major source of worry in Jackson, a majority-black city in a state with a history of racial violence and lynching, since police found her body on 3 August.
After weeks of only saying they were investigating her death, police announced on Tuesday that they were treating it as a possible homicide.
During the news conference, Brackney said the medical examiner had confirmed on Thursday that Fortune’s cause of death was homicide, adding that a suspected killer would be charged with murder.
Police had arrested one man and “additional arrests will be pending as our investigators continue to follow the evidence”, she said. They have interviewed 15 people in the case, she also said.
Fortune’s body was discovered by police hanging from a tree in the lot of an abandoned home off Road of Remembrance.
Brackney said that her body had shown “various states of decomposition”.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, told the BBC that she cried when the police called on Friday to update her about the arrest.
“I guess I do feel like a little sigh of relief,” Spivey said. “Like a little bit of peace just come over me.”
“I just hope that they’ve got the right person,” she added
Spivey has not been “sleeping the best”, as the mystery of her daughter’s death remains unresolved.
“I fall asleep, but I can’t stay asleep,” she said.
The arrest on Friday followed weeks of what Spivey and residents in Jackson had described as relative silence and inaction from local officials.
Combined with the grim nature of Fortune’s death and Mississippi’s history of racial lynchings, the lack of information about the case had left the community in shock and fear.
Spivey told the BBC on Tuesday that she had tried contacting Jackson police several times over the last two weeks, leaving multiple voicemails, and had not heard back.
Brackney addressed the family’s frustration on Friday, saying: “We have been in constant contact with the mother and the stepfather, as well as the biological father, throughout this case.”
After a letter Spivey wrote to officials about the limited communication and speed of the investigation was read during a public city meeting – also on Tuesday – Jackson police made the possible-homicide announcement.
“I’m kind of like in awe,” Spivey said. “Like, I can’t believe it. That was quick.”
Fortune’s death has been described by a member of the US Congress as part of a pattern of “possible modern-day lynchings”.
This week, more than 50 members of Congress sent a letter, external to the FBI and justice department, saying they were “extremely alarmed by reports of black people found hanging from trees in numerous states” and calling for an independent investigation into suspicious deaths of black Americans.
So far this year there had been at least 10 reported hangings of black people in the US, they said, and there were more than 70 lynchings documented between 2000 and 2025, according to the letter.
