Homicide detectives arrest man over death of Black woman found hanging from tree in Mississippi

Police in Jackson, Mississippi, arrested a man on Friday in connection with the killing of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman found hanging from a tree outside an abandoned home in the area last month.

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney identified the arrested man as Jacque Ratliff. She said officers apprehended him on the street after failing to encounter him at the address on their warrants.

“That arrest today is an important development in this investigation but it is not the conclusion,” Brackney said at a press conference on Friday. “This case remains active and additional arrests will be pending as our investigators continue to follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

Police secured warrants for his arrest after the Hinds County coroner determined on Thursday that Fortune’s death was a homicide.

Brackney said she was aware of the local and national attention to the case given Mississippi’s history, but she insisted she could not yet comment on the nature of the death beyond the medical examiner’s findings.

“We owe it to Ms. Fortune, to her family and the integrity of this investigation to let the evidence guide us,” Brackney said.

Raliff will be charged with homicide, according to police.

Mississippi is estimated to have had the most lynchings in the nation between 1882 to 1968, with at least 581 recorded incidents in the state, according to the NAACP.

Fortune’s family have said they don’t believe she died by suicide.

“Tasia always let us know if something happened to her, that she was going to fight,” her mother, Christy Spivey, told WAPT. “Tasia loved life. Tasia loved living life, like, there’s no way, no way that she took her own life.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.