The mother of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old black woman found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi, says she is still awaiting answers more than a month after her daughter's death, prompting anger across a community shaken by the state's history of racial violence. Police confirmed on Tuesday, for the first time, that they were treating the case as a potential homicide, though the official cause of death remains unconfirmed pending the medical examiner's findings, and officials say enquiries from the family had gone unanswered for weeks.

Fortune's body was discovered on 3 August in the lot of an abandoned home; she had last been seen alive by her mother, Christy Spivey, on 26 July at a family reunion in Kentucky. Online petitions calling for greater transparency have gathered tens of thousands of signatures, including one with over 50,000 names seeking an independent probe into the state's chief medical examiner, while members of the US Congress have urged federal intervention. The case is the third in under a year involving a body found hanged from a tree in Mississippi, following two deaths in September 2025 that were ruled suicides, one of which is disputed by a victim's family, deepening community concern about a possible resurgence of racial violence.