Nearly a year after a group of Delta State University football players found 21-year-old student Trey Reed hanging from a tree on campus, his family says that the attorney who vowed a full investigation in the early days has not spoken to them in seven months. He also never gave them the final results of the independent autopsy he promised.
The discovery of a young Black man hanging in a tree on Sept. 15, 2025, made national news, raising the specter of Mississippi’s history of racist lynchings. Ben Crump, a nationally renowned civil rights lawyer who helped secure a $27 million settlement for the family of George Floyd, came to the family’s aid and cast doubt on the state autopsy’s official ruling that Reed’s death was a suicide. He helped the family secure an independent autopsy with funding from former NFL athlete Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative.
“Trey’s death evoked the collective memory of a community that has suffered a historic wound over many, many years and many, many deaths,” Crump said in a statement on Sept. 19, 2025. “Peace will come only by getting to the truth. We thank Colin Kaepernick for supporting this grieving family and the cause of justice and truth.”
But more than 10 months later, Reed’s family members say they feel that they’ve been abandoned by the advocates who pledged to stand at their side—the lawyers and institutions that first spoke up on their behalf when Reed’s death was national news.
“ I’ve been calling, calling, calling Ben Crump. … I haven’t heard anything from him since he said that he would get back in touch with me between Christmas and the first of the year,” Trey’s mother, Sophia Reed, told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview in April. “They would not answer the phone for anybody.”
Now, as the public’s eye has moved to more recent causes, the family says they’re left waiting for answers.
“ We’re just trying to figure it out. We just want to know what really happened,” said Trey’s grandmother, Sharon Candy Tillman said.
Evidence Included Suicidal Text Messages
Though the Tillmans and the Reeds are pursuing answers in Trey Reed’s death separately, both find themselves in similar circumstances as the anniversary of his passing approaches.
Shortly after the discovery of Trey’s body on the campus in Cleveland, Mississippi, authorities investigating his death said that video evidence existed. “There are videos,” Delta State Director of Public Safety Mike Peeler said on Sept. 17, 2025. “They are in the hands of the investigative team.” Peeler declined to specify what videos he was referring to, and if they included footage of Reed’s death.
Now, the family has clarified that the only videos they’ve been shown came from the morning of Trey’s discovery, with no surveillance footage whatsoever from the moment of his death.
The conversations with Trey’s family also revealed a critical piece of evidence previously undisclosed to the public. Both sides of the family stated that Trey’s girlfriend at the time of his death provided investigators with suicidal text messages from him the evening before his body was found.
“The message read that he was going to hang himself,” Sophia Reed told the Mississippi Free Press on April 23.
Sharon Candy Tillman confirmed that she had also seen the messages that her grandson had sent to his girlfriend threatening suicide, in addition to messages stating that he had made a previous attempt but failed. Candy added that, in the messages, Trey’s girlfriend had told him that she would call his grandmother.
She never received that call. “ She said he normally would send those kinds of messages to her, and she would say, ‘Just go to bed, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow,’” Candy told the Mississippi Free Press on July 23.
‘We Just Want the Truth, Whatever That Looks Like’
The death of Trey Reed inspired a maelstrom of speculation and outright misinformation. But no claim has loomed over the investigation more persistently than the idea that Reed was the victim of blunt-force trauma prior to his death, an assertion that, if proven, would upend the entire investigation and contradict the findings of the coroner and the office of Mississippi’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner.
That rumor was tied to the second autopsy, performed by Dr. Matthias Okoye, an independent forensic pathologist. Now the origin of that rumor is clear. The closest the family got to learning the results of the second autopsy came in early October 2025, when the family says Okoye conducted a Zoom meeting to share preliminary findings—not his final determination—as to the manner and cause of Trey Reed’s death.
Shonna Tillman, Candy’s niece and a close advocate in the aftermath of Trey’s death, remembers the call. In it, Okoye discussed his analysis of some form of injury to Trey’s neck.
“His conclusion was that he could not tell at the moment, because he was missing some key evidence,” Shonna told the Mississippi Free Press on July 23.
Sophia Reed also recalls the meeting with Okoye and told this reporter that the forensic examiner had indicated the presence of trauma to her son’s neck and head, as well as some form of bruising on his buttocks, but wasn’t prepared to finalize the results without “reconstructing the whole scene,” in her words. In addition to the belt, she said, the state medical examiner also retained parts of Trey’s neck that Okoye needed for a final determination.
Though the meeting was some time in the past, Candy said that what Okoye was missing was the belt, belonging to Trey, used in the hanging. The grandmother said that without it, Okoye could not confirm whether or not a specific injury to Trey’s neck had been caused by the buckle of that belt.
The family had hoped to get more conclusive answers once the independent autopsy was finalized. But after that meeting, the autopsy simply faded from public view. Neither Sophia Reed nor Candy Tillman ever heard directly from Okoye again.
The Tillman family said they felt disrespected by Ben Crump’s law office from early in the process. Crump’s team assigned them a Memphis-based lawyer as a liaison, they said.
“Conversations and trying to get information was very hard. He would either not text back or not call us back, and we would have to call four, five, six, seven, 10 times for him to call back,” Shonna Tillman said. “He would promise us an answer one week, and a week would go by, and we still wouldn’t have an answer. So we’re back playing chase the lawyer again.”
And before long, in the eyes of the family, Crump had simply moved on to the next high-profile case. Weeks passed. Then months. The first of January this year was the last the Tillmans said they had heard from Crump. No matter how often they call, Candy said, they can’t get so much as a response.
Crump has since taken on multiple high-profile cases in Mississippi, including the police shooting of infant Kohen Wiley in Senatobia and the death of Nolan Wells on Horn Island. In both of those cases, Crump also pursued independent autopsies, announcing the preliminary results for each within weeks.
“So it’s been extremely difficult, and it also feels like we got pushed to the side once another big case came, and that is really unfortunate,” Shonna said. “We just want the truth, whatever that looks like. And we’re not trying to cause any trouble or division. We just want answers so we can properly grieve as a family.”
Candy Tillman last heard from Okoye’s office over a month ago, but did not receive the autopsy, and has heard nothing since, she said. On July 30, after repeated attempts from the Mississippi Free Press to contact Crump’s team, Candy said she was able to reach the liaison, who promised updates in the coming weeks.
For the families, the reason for withholding the final results of the independent autopsy is unimportant. The long silence has left them with an open wound—the last measure of effort to investigate the death of a son, a grandson, a nephew.
Remarkably, the Tillmans said their understanding is that the final determination from the Cleveland Police Department is also awaiting the secondary autopsy—perhaps the last remaining piece needed to close the case. The Cleveland Police Department did not respond to a request for an interview on the subject.
No Response From Crump Team
The Mississippi Free Press has repeatedly reached out to all parties involved in the secondary autopsy of Trey Reed.
This reporter first contacted the law offices of Ben Crump via email in October 2025, April 2026 and July 2026. The Mississippi Free Press also made phone calls to Crump’s office directly, requesting any possible information on the second autopsy of Trey Reed on behalf of the family, and contacted Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative in May, June and July of this year, with the same request. Neither party responded to any of the attempted inquiries.
Earlier this week, the Mississippi Free Press was able to speak with a representative from the office of Dr. Matthias Okoye, the independent forensic pathologist who personally performed the second autopsy. The conversation was short. The representative first declined to connect the Mississippi Free Press with Okoye for an interview. When this reporter offered to connect the family of Trey Reed directly with Okoye’s office without any need for an interview, the representative declined again, suggesting the family should reach out to their legal representation.
When informed that the family could not reach their legal representation, the representative said they should speak with “the corporation which handles these second autopsies.”
When asked if he was referring to Kaepernick’s Autopsy Initiative, the representative hurriedly ended the call without answering.
‘Either Way It Goes, I Wanna Know’
No matter the outcome of the investigation, Candy Tillman mourns the loss of her grandson every day. She remembers both his humility and his humor—a quiet, intelligent young man, wickedly funny and sweet in equal measure.
“ He had called me earlier that day around 6 p.m. … We just had a good conversation. He was in a good mood,” Candy said, speaking of the day Trey Reed passed. “He was saying, ‘Well, I gotta write a paper. I’d written the paper, but they sent it back ’cause I used a little AI.’”
“And we laughed, and I was like, ‘You can’t do that.’ We laughed about that. I was telling him that his sister was coming to spend the weekend with me that following weekend. He said, ‘Well, I’m gonna come home and we all gonna stay at your house.’ I said that was fine. And he said, ‘Grandma?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Trey?’ He said, ‘I love you.’ And I said, ‘I love you too.’ And we hung on up.”
“I thought that he was in a real good mood that day,” she added. “And then he got off the phone with me. He called his granddad. And he said, ‘I called, but I don’t want nothing. I was just calling to check on you.’”
Trey Reed told his granddad that he loved him. His granddad said he loved him back. At that, he ended the call. They would never speak again.
Candy Tillman is mystified by Trey’s last day alive. He seemed happy, loving. He had never, in her eyes, been a particularly melancholy young man. The only thing that came to mind was something he’d tell her often throughout his adolescence.
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” Trey would tell her. “Figure out what, Trey?” she’d respond. He didn’t know. “I’m just trying to figure it out,” he’d repeat.
Candy doesn’t entirely know what to make of the questions that remain—but said that she believes the Cleveland Police Department has done its job in the investigation.
Sophia Reed is much more doubtful. She questions the provenance of the suicidal text messages, wondering if they could’ve been sent by someone other than Trey. She has questions about the locations Trey’s phone pinged off of before he died and doesn’t believe he was suicidal.
But both women are certain about one thing: their family deserves the full measure of accountability from their advocates and the authorities.
“ Either way it goes, I wanna know,” Sophia Reed told this reporter. “Y’all owe me that much to prove to me that my child killed himself. Once they prove that to me, I’m done. But that ain’t been proven.”
See a timeline of Trey Reed’s death and the investigation here.
Read more of the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of Trey Reed’s death here.
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