Police make 2nd arrest in death of woman found hanging from tree

Police in Mississippi have arrested a second man in the death of a Black woman found hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect.

Jackson police said late Tuesday that they arrested 25-year-old Earnest Lloyd Jr. in the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, whose body was found hanging behind an abandoned home in the city on Aug. 3.

Like Fortune and the first man arrested, 51-year-old Jarques Ratliff, Lloyd is Black. He appeared at a brief hearing Wednesday in Jackson.

Fortune's mother Christy Spivey, who attended the hearing, said afterward that she was ecstatic to see arrests made in her daughter's death. She said that neither she nor several of her daughter's friends knew Lloyd, and she cautioned that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. 

"My family is not the only family that this is affecting," Spivey said of the defendants' families. "I feel for them as well. The only difference is that mine can never come back." 

"I'll never truly have peace," she said. 

Ratliff was arrested in September on murder charges. He pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond.

After Ratliff's arrest, Jackson's police chief, RaShall Brackney, said Ratliff had an "association" with Fortune, but she didn't elaborate.

Police said in a statement that they issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect, but gave no details about that person's identity or alleged link to Fortune's death. They also said they expect to issue additional warrants. After Ratliff's arrest, Brackney said police interviewed over a dozen people and collected forensic evidence as part of the investigation. 

Although police haven't suggested a possible motive for the killing or said whether they think race played a role, the case has attracted widespread attention because the manner of death recalled lynchings in the Southern state. Her death also comes one 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 Vicksburg, Mississippi. Both deaths were ruled suicides, though Reed's family and attorneys have called for an independent autopsy. 

A Kentucky native, Fortune had four children and had been living in Jackson for about a decade, relatives said. Spivey said earlier this month that the Fortune's loved ones "still don't have a lot of answers." 

Spivey previously said her daughter struggled with homelessness in recent years, and that she wasn't sure where her daughter was living at the time of her death. She said that before her death, her daughter had talked about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in order.