Amid the gentle slopes of Greenville, Kentucky’s historic West End Cemetery, preparations are underway for the burial of Tasia Fortune, whose family hopes she’s remembered for her intelligence, talent and faith, even as investigators in Mississippi continue to probe how the 29-year-old Black woman came to be found dead hanging from a tree outside an abandoned house in Jackson over two weeks ago.
Fortune had lived in Jackson for the past 10 years, according to her obituary, but she came from Kentucky, where a funeral service will be held Saturday at Tucker Funeral Home before she is interred at West End, a historically Black cemetery nearby.
Jackson Police have categorized Fortune’s case as “a death pending investigation,” and the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy last week, police said.
Those results are still pending, and police have not indicated whether they suspect foul play, but the violent history of race relations in the state combined with two other recent hangings in Mississippi have sparked interest and concern in Fortune’s death.
Those hangings were ultimately ruled as suicides, but widespread criticism of the investigation into the death of Nolan Xavier Wells, off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast last month, has further led to questions about how Fortune died.
