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 Ratliff’s 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. She also declined to comment on what caused Fortune’s death and how long she had been at the location where her remains were found.
“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.
The suspect had an “association” with Fortune before the killing, but Brackney declined to further describe the relationship.
Mississippi is estimated to have had the most lynchings in the nation between 1882 and 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."
As of Friday evening, Ratliff had not appeared in local jail logs and it was unclear if he had legal representation.
More arrests are expected in the case, Brackney said.
