Capital B News12%
Black Woman Found Hanging in Tree in Mississippi Has Been Identified as Tasia Fortune 28%
By Ashton Pittman33% Mississippi Free Press33%
8/7/2026, 10:42:58 AM
Topics: Homicide Investigation, Suspicious Death, Community Response, Racial History, Legal Proceedings
Keywords: Tasia Fortune, Hanging Death, Mississippi, Jackson, Hinds County Coroners Office, Foul Play, Unidentified Black Female, Road Of Remembrance, Jeremiah Howard, Mississippi State Medical Examiners Office, Autopsy, Etta Avolio, Gofundme, Burial Expenses, Final Arrangements, Mississippi Free Press, Beloved Daughter, Sister, Friend, Devastated, Heartbroken, Strong Minded, Big Hearted, Vibrant Young Woman, Justice, Faith, God, Ward 3 Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes, U S Attorney Baxter Kruger, Wlbt, Tree Hanging Deaths, Trey Reed, Delta State University Student, Cleveland Mississippi, Racially Motivated Murder, Lynchings, Black Men, Late 1800s, Early 1900s, Ben Crump, Independent Autopsy, Text Messages, Suicide, Cory Zukatis, Vicksburg Mississippi, Homeless White Man
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Biased Writer Voice, and Halo Effect, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 22% saturation with 131 hits. Analysis detected 680 faulty-reasoning hits from 595 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31.6% and a BS Rank of 28% (21,904 of 30,190 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 72.60% of the article peer group.
The woman whose body was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant Jackson, Mississippi, home is 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, the Hinds County Coroner’s Office said on Thursday.
Authorities have not said whether or not they suspect foul play.
The Jackson Police Department first announced in a statement on Monday evening that officers “located the body of an unidentified Black female” at the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, a mostly Black neighborhood, at 9:05 that night.
Neighbors in the mostly Black Jackson neighborhood contacted police after finding her body, though it is not clear how long it had been there.
Hinds County Coroner Jeremiah Howard, who publicly identified the body as Tasia Fortune on Thursday, said earlier this week that the body would be transported to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office to perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.
Fortune’s aunt, Etta Avolio, started a GoFundMe to help raise funds to cover burial expenses and final arrangements.
The GoFundMe, which has a $3,000 goal, had raised over $1,600 as of Thursday evening.
Avolio confirmed the fundraiser’s legitimacy to the Mississippi Free Press.
“Tasia Fortune was a beloved daughter, sister, and friend whose passing has left her family devastated and heartbroken,” Avolio’s fundraiser says.
“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.
Tasia was a strong-minded, big-hearted, vibrant young woman whose life was taken at just twenty-nine years old.
Her loss has deeply shaken everyone who knew and loved her, and her family is now trying to begin healing while also facing the painful responsibility of saying their final farewells.”
“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 adds.
Ward 3 Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes sent a letter to U.S.
Attorney Baxter Kruger’s office on Wednesday asking for assistance, WLBT reported .
Mississippi authorities have investigated other high-profile cases involving tree-hanging deaths in the past year.
In September 2025, a group of student athletes found 18-year-old Delta State University student Trey Reed , who was Black, hanging from a tree on the campus in Cleveland, Mississippi.
His death raised fears of a racially motivated murder, considering the history of hundreds of lynchings of Black men that occurred in Mississippi in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Ben Crump, the attorney who represented Reed’s family, cast doubt on the official ruling that Reed’s death was a suicide and helped obtain an independent autopsy.
Last week, the Mississippi Free Press reported for the first time that Reed’s family said his girlfriend had received text messages from his phone the night before his body was found in which he threatened to hang himself .
The family still has questions, though.
They said they are waiting on the final independent autopsy results, but have not been able to reach Crump since January .
Crump also represents the family of Nolan Wells .
On the same day that Trey Reed was found last year, police in Vicksburg, Mississippi, found the body of Cory Zukatis hanging in a tree.
Misinformation spread connecting that case to Reed’s, with some falsely claiming that Zukatis, a homeless white man whose dog had recently been taken from him , was also Black.
Authorities later ruled his death a suicide, too.
Speakers
7speakers54%attributed speech276writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageBen Crump
26 attributed words8.2% of attributed speech57% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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