By her family’s account, Tasia Fortune was a loving, caring woman who led a troubled life. She ran away from foster care when she was 16, leaving western Kentucky and finding her way to Jackson, Mississippi. There was homelessness and addiction. Relationships that didn’t last produced four children.
Then on an August day, the body of the 29-year-old was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home on the 500 block of Road of Remembrance. The home is in a mostly Black neighborhood in west Jackson strewn with pockets of tall grass, vacant lots and older homes.
“She had a good heart. She just had a hard life,” her mother, Christy Spivey, told Mississippi Today.
Spivey doesn’t know much about Fortune’s life in Jackson, and she fell numb when she learned of her daughter’s fate.
National interest grew in the days following the discovery, primarily because of the manner in which Fortune, a Black woman, was found. Results of an autopsy have not been released. Authorities say they have identified a person of interest, who is being held on an unrelated charge, but have yet to release an explanation of how Fortune died and why.
Spivey said she is not ruling anything out, but insists her daughter would never take her own life nor does she think race was a factor.
A vacant home in the 500 block of Road of Remembrance is pictured in Jackson on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026. According to authorities, Tasia Fortune’s body was found hanging from a tree in the backyard of a vacant home Monday, Aug. 3, 2026. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today“I really don’t feel like it was a racial crime. … I think that this was more of a personal crime, but I definitely understand the fears,” she said.
Like many others, Robert Luckett, a professor of history at Jackson State University, has been watching the case unfold. He understands the national attention.
The public’s perception of Mississippi as a dangerous place, particularly for people of color, taps into the state’s history of violence, he said earlier this week.
“It’s a reputation that we’ve earned in the state due to the very real nature of racialized violence whether or not we attribute it to this case or not,” Luckett said.
“It’s an image of this state that lingers and that people from the outside look at Mississippi and say ‘Oh, an incident like this one is obviously a continuation of the history of really intense hate crimes that we witnessed in this nation,’” he said.
The circumstances surrounding Fortune’s death have evoked the recent case of Trey Reed, a Black student who was found hanging at Delta State University last September. Mississippi authorities concluded he died by suicide amid initial speculation by his family that foul play was involved.
LaToni Fortune said she last saw her older sister last month when Tasia returned to Kentucky for a family reunion.
“She just comes back to Kentucky and visit us or we’ll go to Jackson and visit her,” she said.
She said her sister had no car and had trouble finding work.
Her mother acknowledged the family’s troubles, describing battles over keeping her family together.
Fortune and her other two siblings were put into foster care, Spivey said. Fortune grew into a talented student and a cross-country track athlete. Despite being separated from family, she found ways to stay in touch with loved ones.
“They couldn’t keep us apart, one way or another,” Spivey said.
A makeshift memorial for Tasia Fortune is seen in the backyard of a vacant home in the 500 block of Road of Remembrance in Jackson on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. According to authorities, Fortune’s body was found hanging from a tree in the backyard of a vacant home Monday, Aug. 3, 2026. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayFortune was just 16 when she ran away to Mississippi with someone she met in foster care, her family said. She eventually made her way to Jackson, where she lived for most of the last 13 years of her life.
She fell on hard times, her family said, spending a lot of her time homeless and wandering the streets.
Spivey was heartbroken to learn her daughter had fallen into addiction. The family tried to help her return to Kentucky and get sober multiple times. She always returned to Jackson to be close to her children.
The recent reunion in Kentucky is a happy memory for Spivey. It was the last time she would see her daughter. They all went swimming and went out to eat together.
A memorial has risen at the house where Fortune was found, a small mound of flowers, balloons, teddy bears and pinwheels surrounding a framed picture of her.
“We’re going to fight until the end to get justice for her,” Spivey said.
A GoFundMe account has been established to cover burial costs and care for Fortune’s children.
Candice Wilder and Molly Minta contributed to this reporting.
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