Second man arrested in death of Black woman found hanging from a tree in Mississippi
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Police have arrested a second man in the death of a Black woman found hanging from a tree in Mississippi and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect.
Jackson police 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 who was arrested, Lloyd is Black.
Jarques Ratliff, 51, was arrested in September on murder charges. He pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond.
Police said they’ve issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect but gave no details about that person’s identity or alleged link to Fortune's death.
After Ratliff's arrest, Jackson's police chief, RaShall Brackney, said Ratliff had an “association” with Fortune, but she didn't elaborate.
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.
Mississippi is estimated to seen the most lynchings in the nation between 1882 and 1968, with at least 581 recorded in the state, according to the NAACP.
A Kentucky native, Fortune had four children and had been living in Jackson for about a decade, relatives said.
Her mother, Christy Spivey, previously said Fortune had struggled with homelessness in recent years, and she wasn’t sure where her daughter was living at the time of her death. She said that before her passing, her daughter had talked about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in order.
"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."
