{"id":477873,"date":"2026-09-28T02:04:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477873\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T02:04:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:04:30","slug":"tasia-fortunes-hanging-was-staged-after-her-death-mississippi-police-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/477873\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasia Fortune’s hanging was ‘staged’ after her death, Mississippi police say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tasia Fortune’s hanging was ‘staged’ after her death, Mississippi police say<\/p>\n

\"DefaultJACKSON, Miss. \u2014<\/p>\n

Tasia Fortune was apparently killed in a drug dispute before her body was hung in a tree in a \u201cstaged\u201d lynching behind an abandoned home in the Mississippi capital this summer, a detective testified Friday.<\/p>\n

The Aug. 3 discovery of the body \u2014 Fortune was Black \u2014 stoked fear and drew widespread attention because the scene recalled actual lynchings<\/a> in the Southern state, which has a long and troubled history of racial violence.<\/p>\n

Authorities haven\u2019t disclosed the exact cause of Fortune\u2019s death, but they did rule it a homicide and have arrested two men, both of them Black, on murder charges. They also issued an arrest warrant for a third, unnamed, person.<\/p>\n

During a hearing Friday to establish whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant sending a grand jury the case against the first man arrested, Jarques Ratliff, Jackson police Detective Samuel Dukes testified that the hanging was \u201cstaged,\u201d citing the medical examiner’s opinion.<\/p>\n

Dukes said the motive for the killing appears to have been a drug dispute, and that interviews with others revealed that Fortune fought hard before she was killed.<\/p>\n

Ratliff, 51, who was arrested in mid-September, has pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond. Police arrested a second defendant<\/a>, 25-year-old Earnest Lloyd Jr., this week.<\/p>\n

During Friday’s hearing, which will resume Sept. 30, Ratliff blurted out in court that he and Fortune were friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t do it, and I\u2019m behind him,\u201d Ratliff’s stepdaughter, Lashuna Jones, said outside of court.<\/p>\n

Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, has said her daughter, who had four children, struggled with homelessness in recent years, and that she wasn\u2019t sure where Fortune was living at the time of her death. She said Fortune had talked about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tasia Fortune’s hanging was ‘staged’ after her death, Mississippi police say JACKSON, Miss. \u2014 Tasia Fortune was apparently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[187509,187506,121,123,122,5379,187507,187508],"class_list":["post-477873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-atm-fee","tag-drug-dispute","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-share","tag-staged-death","tag-tasia-fortune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}