Arrest in the death of Tasia Fortune

Police in Jackson, Mississippi, have arrested a man in the death of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree last month. The arrest came after the state medical examiner's office ruled her death a homicide.

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney announced at a news conference Friday that police had secured search and arrest warrants for 51-year-old Jarques Ratliff and arrested him when they encountered him walking along a city street. Brackney said Ratliff had an "association" with Fortune but declined to disclose details about it, according to CBS News. Ratliff was arrested on a charge of murder, police said.

The medical examiner's office determined Thursday evening that the death was a homicide, Brackney said, allowing police to execute the warrants they had on hand. The chief said the case remains active and additional arrests are pending as investigators continue to follow the evidence, according to multiple outlets.

Fortune's mother, Christy Spivey, said Friday that when police told her of the arrest, "I just started crying and told them 'thank you, thank you, thank you.'" Spivey said police did not share a motive or whether DNA led them to the arrest. She said she did not know the man arrested but was asking her daughter's friends if they knew him. "We still don't have a lot of answers," Spivey said, as reported by the BBC and other outlets.

The investigation

Fortune's body was discovered on August 3 in the backyard of an abandoned home in Jackson. Police initially categorized the case as a "death pending investigation." At a city council meeting on Tuesday, Brackney said the department had been investigating the case "from day one as a homicide," a statement she later reiterated to the BBC, explaining that the department treats any pending death case as a potential homicide to preserve evidence while awaiting autopsy results.

The medical examiner's office conducted an autopsy on Fortune on August 11, but police had not yet received the results as of Tuesday's council meeting, Brackney told the council, according to CNN and KRDO.

Brackney said police interviewed nearly 15 people in the case and that the investigation has been ongoing. She acknowledged the family's frustration, saying, "We have been in constant contact with the mother and the stepfather, as well as the biological father, throughout this case," as reported by the BBC.

Family's calls for answers

Spivey had expressed frustration over what she described as silence from officials in the weeks following her daughter's death. She told the BBC she had tried contacting Jackson police several times, leaving multiple voicemails without hearing back. A letter she wrote about the limited communication and speed of the investigation was read aloud at a public city council meeting on Tuesday, the same day police announced they were treating the death as a possible homicide.

In the letter, Spivey wrote, "I have no more answers from one day of this investigation. The detectives are like they are on a prerecorded message, just saying the same thing over and over. And now it's gone to silence," as quoted by CNN.

Spivey also said in a post on the family's GoFundMe page that she had asked Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes for help "because of the silence and rudeness of Jackson Police Department," according to CNN. Stokes said he sent letters to the Mississippi US attorney's office and the FBI weeks ago urging federal assistance in the investigation, as reported by the BBC.

Broader context

Fortune's death came less than a year after the hanging deaths of 21-year-old Trey Reed, a Black student at Delta State University in Cleveland, and Cory Zukatis, an unhoused white man in his 30s, in Vicksburg. Police in Cleveland concluded Reed's death was a suicide; the Mississippi State Medical Examiner determined Zukatis died by suicide. Reed's mother contests the ruling in her son's case, according to reports.

A member of the US Congress, Jasmine Crockett, sent a letter to the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into recent deaths in Mississippi, including Fortune's, as "possible cases of modern-day lynchings," citing the state's "appalling historical reputation of violent terrorism against black people," as reported by the BBC. More than 50 members of Congress also sent a letter to the FBI and the justice department expressing alarm over reports of Black people found hanging from trees and calling for an independent investigation, according to the BBC. That letter cited at least 10 reported hangings of Black people in the US so far this year and more than 70 lynchings documented between 2000 and 2025.

Brackney said the police department is aware of the broader scrutiny. "We understand the questions and the desire for answers given Mississippi's history," she said, "but we do have a responsibility to make sure that what we say publicly is supported by our evidence and facts," as quoted by The Guardian.