Jackson police investigating Tasia Fortune’s hanging death as homicide while awaiting autopsy results
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Police Chief RaShall Brackney says the department has investigated Fortune’s death as a homicide “from day one.”
A month after Tasia Fortune’s body was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Miss., authorities say they are investigating the death of the mother of four as a homicide.
This comes as police await Fortune’s autopsy results, which, according to Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney’s address to the city council on Tuesday, were completed “four weeks ago,” but “to date, we have not received the outcomes of that autopsy,” Tippah County News reported.
Brackey also told the city council that the police department has been “investigating this case from day one as a homicide, until we hear otherwise from the medical examiner’s office.”
The investigation being labeled as a homicide is an update from the previous “active death investigation” status of the case, as police referred to it in August.
Fortune was found dead on Aug. 3 in the backyard of an abandoned residential property on the Road of Remembrance in Jackson. The 29-year-old lived in Mississippi for more than a decade after moving from Kentucky. Her mother, Christy Spivey, shared that she saw her daughter in Kentucky on July 26, days before her death, and does not believe her daughter died by suicide.
“I know my daughter, and she did not do this to herself,” Spivey told ABC News.
Spivey has also openly criticized the police’s communication with the family. She updated the family’s GoFundMe page on Thursday, saying that she has reached out to Councilman Kenneth Stokes for support on the ongoing investigation “because of the silence and rudeness of Jackson Police Department.” Stokes advocated for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate Fortune’s death before authorities confirmed her identity, saying in an interview that Mississippi’s history of lynching must be considered in this case, even if there is ultimately no racial motive found.