Woman Found Hanging from Tree in Mississippi Identified as 29-Year-Old Tasia Fortune
In yet another tragic loss in Mississippi following the death of Nolan Wells near Horn Island, a Black woman was found hanging from a tree on Monday. After Mississippi authorities identified her as 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, detectives began investigating her death alongside other high-profile cases involving tree-hangings in the state this past year.
The Hinds County Coroner’s Office identified the Black female hanging behind a vacant home on the 500 block of Road of Remembrance in Jackson as Tasia Fortune, the Mississippi Free Press reported. She was found by neighborhood residents, who contacted police. It’s unclear how long her body was there.
Crime scene investigators are working to determine the circumstances surrounding the death, the Jackson Police Department announced, noting that an autopsy to determine her cause and manner of death is scheduled. Authorities have not said whether or not they suspect foul play, however, her family is demanding answers.
“The family also wants others to know that justice will be served, and they hold firmly to their faith, believing that God is on their side as they walk through this heartbreaking loss,” Fortune’s aunt, Etta Avolio, said on a verified GoFundMe fundraiser. She also called her niece “a beloved daughter, sister, and friend whose passing has left her family devastated and heartbroken. During this lifetime, families go through ups and downs, and right now Tasia’s loved ones are facing one of the hardest moments they have ever known.”
Related: Hate for Nolan Wells’ Mom Reflects a Double Burden for Black Families Mourning in the Spotlight
Avolio added that Fortune was “a strong-minded, big-hearted, vibrant young woman whose life was taken at just twenty-nine years old,” whose death has “deeply shaken everyone who knew and loved her.”
Her death is one of many troubling cases involving Black Mississippi tree-hanging deaths within the last 10 years.
On September 15, 2025, the body of Delta State University student De’Martravion “Trey” Reed was found hanging from a tree by a group of student football players on the Cleveland, Mississippi, campus, the Clarion Ledger reported. His death sparked widespread suspicion of a racially motivated crime, considering Mississippi’s painful history of hundreds of documented lynchings during the the Jim Crow era.
Within days, the Mississippi state medical examiner announced the 21-year-old’s manner of death was suicide, and Delta State University Police Chief Michael Peeler said at the time that there was no evidence of foul play, according to LocalMemphis.com.
Otis Byrd, 54, was found hanging from a tree in Port Gibson, Claiborne County, weeks after being reported missing on March 8, 2015. “After a careful and thorough review, a team of experienced federal prosecutors and FBI agents determined that there was no evidence to prove that Byrd’s death was a homicide,” the Justice Department announced, though his relatives remained skeptical because he was found hanging by a bed sheet from a limb about 12 feet high, according to the Guardian.
“At this point the family believes that it was not a suicide,” said Dennis Sweet, a lawyer for the family, at an appearance in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2015.
Three years later, in February 2018, 21-year-old Willie Andrew Jones Jr. was found hanging from a pecan tree in the yard of his white girlfriend’s home in Scott County following an argument with her, the Associated Press reported. Despite the sheriff’s department ruling his death a suicide, his family believes he was lynched.
Tammie Townsend, Jones’s mother, said her son had never expressed to her that he had thoughts of ending his life, per the AP. She also pointed out a sports injury prevented him from lifting his arm above his head—something she said would have made it physically impossible to hang himself.
