The Jackson Police Department arrested a man in connection with the death of Tasia Fortune on Friday morning after the Mississippi state medical examiner officially ruled the death a homicide on Thursday night, Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney announced in a Friday press conference.
WAPT reported that Brackney said police searched the home of Jacques Ratliff on Friday afternoon before encountering and arresting him on Capital Street. She did not disclose Ratliff’s charges but said more arrests are expected. All suspects are considered innocent until found guilty by a jury of their peers.
Police interviewed 15 people and did hundreds of hours of investigative work between Fortune’s death and Ratliff’s arrest, Brackney said at the press conference.
JPD had to wait for the medical examiner’s official ruling before making arrest. The medical examiner’s report was completed four weeks ago, Brackney told the Jackson City Council on Tuesday.
Brackney also corrected reports alleging that Fortune’s autopsy was performed by the same medical examiner as Nolan Wells, a young Black man found dead following a trip to Horn Island with a group of friends over the Fourth of July weekend. Wells’ cause of death has not been announced.
“That is a very different person who did that autopsy and that examination as well,” Brackney said.
Brackney warned community members to be skeptical of other potential misinformation regarding Fortune’s death going forward.
Brackney’s update followed after a community member read a letter she said was from Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, aloud. The letter expressed concerns about a lack of information regarding her daughter’s death.
“I have no more answers from one day of this investigation,” Spivey said in the letter. “… The coroner’s office has stated that it’s a homicide, (and) that’s (the) only detail, but they don’t say anything public or put it in writing.”
Only the coroner can relay information from the medical examiner to Fortune’s family, Brackney said.
“The coroner cannot give any information to the family that the medical examiner has not given them,” Brackney said, offering some explanation for the delay in information.
Stokes: ‘We must have questions asked and answered’
Jackson Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes addressed concerns that Tasia Fortune’s death might be part of a larger trend of suspicious deaths among Black Americans in the South and across the country in recent months.
“What I’m trying to get the public to understand this situation is beginning to have questions asked all over the country, and it’s not just Mississippi—it’s the South,” Stokes said at the Tuesday council meeting. “They’re keeping up with the hangings that’s taking place. That’s why we must have questions asked and answered.”
Stokes is far from alone in his concerns.
Sixty members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI on Thursday, asking they investigate the hanging deaths of Black Americans in recent years and highlighting the widespread nature of modern lynchings in the United States. The letter states there have been 10 reported hangings of Black people in 2026 alone in places like Mississippi, Michigan and New York.
“They’re concerned that there’s some kind of situation that’s taking place throughout the United States—the hanging of black people again—and we cannot sweep this idea under the rug,” Stokes said. “Whether it’s a conspiracy or not, that’s why we got to know specifically what’s taking place.”
Christy Spivey, Fortune’s mother, told ABC News she “does not want her name associated with” the death possibly being racially motivated, the Associated Press reported.
National figures have highlighted the deaths of Nolan Wells, Tasia Fortune and Trey Reed—a Delta State University student who was found hanging in a tree on campus last year. While many feared Reed’s death may have been a lynching, family members told the Mississippi Free Press earlier this year that the DSU student’s girlfriend had received text messages from Reed in which he threatened to hang himself the night before his death. Reed’s family still has questions, though, and are still waiting for the results of an independent autopsy almost a year later.
Stokes sent a similar letter asking the U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of Mississippi Baxter Kruger to help investigate Tasia Fortune’s death on Aug. 5.
“If we have some kind of person that’s intentionally doing this negative thing, trying to create some kind of race issue in this city or state, we need to know, but if we have some cold-blooded killers that might be traveling all over the state and country, that might be hanging Black people, then we need to get them,” Stokes said on Tuesday. “We need to let them know we’re going to spend every dime we have in this city, in this state, to fight against hangings.”
Despite the national concern, Jackson Police Chief RaShell Brackney declined to call Fortune’s death part of a trend.
“I would also hesitate to label these things as serial incidents that are going on—or serial behaviors that are going on—across Jackson, Mississippi, or Mississippi as well,” Brackney said at the Jackson City Council meeting. “There is a lot of misinformation out there about this case and other ones.”
Brackney followed up on those comments at the Sept. 11 press conference and warned against making unsupported claims about the case.
“We understand that this case is being viewed through a broader lens, a global lens, and we do not dismiss those concerns,” Brackney said on Friday. “We are taking them seriously, at the same time, we do have a responsibility to make sure that what we say publicly is supported by our evidence and facts … We owe it to Ms. Fortune, to her family, and the integrity of this investigation to let the evidence guide us, and there’s still work to do.“
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of Tasia Fortune and read past stories here.
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