CLEVELAND, Miss. (AP) — Police in Bolivar County are awaiting autopsy results for Trey Reed, a Black student found hanging from a tree at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. The case has ignited strong emotions in a state with a history of racist violence.
The 21-year-old student was found near the campus pickleball courts early Monday. While police have said they saw no evidence of foul play, his family is demanding answers and has hired prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
Campus police Chief Michael Peeler released little new information about the investigation at a news conference, calling the death an “isolated incident” and insisting there were no active threats to students and faculty.
“Out of respect for those grieving, we ask for continued patience and compassion as this investigation proceeds,” Peeler told reporters at the Delta State campus.
The chief state medical examiner was conducting an autopsy Wednesday, and Peeler said preliminary findings should be released in a day or two.
Peeler said the evidence includes video footage, but he would not say what it shows and where it came from, citing the ongoing investigation.
Crump said in a statement on Wednesday that police should allow the student’s family to view any video police have gathered. He said he also plans to lead an investigation alongside civil rights groups that would include an independent autopsy.
“We are taking every step to uncover the truth about what happened,” Crump said.
Family members also pressed for more information from university officials during a news conference on Tuesday. Vanessa Jones, another attorney for the family, said the student had just started classes at Delta State this fall and was “full of life, eager to be there.”
“There should have been cameras at the university that easily could enlighten us as to what happened,” Jones told reporters, adding: “From the moment he left his dorm room or entered that campus, there should be surveillance of all of his actions.”
Bolivar County Deputy Coroner Murray Roark dispelled online rumors that Reed was found with broken arms and legs in a Monday interview with the Mississippi Free Press.
“I saw no broken limbs,” Roark said, explaining that he assisted Deputy Coroner Dwayne Proctor with the examination.
Roark’s assessment was echoed the next day in a press statement by Bolivar County Coroner Rudolph Seals. “Based on the preliminary examination, we can confirm that the deceased did not suffer any lacerations, contusions, compound fractures, broken bones, or injuries consistent with an assault. At this time, there is no evidence to suggest the individual was physically attacked before his death,” Seals wrote.
On Tuesday, Jones said during a press conference on Tuesday that the Grenada County Sheriff’s Department had initially told the family that Reed died in his dorm room before they learned that he was found hanging in a tree. That, too, fueled rumors online.
Grenada County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Ricky Williamson told the Mississippi Free Press in an interview on Wednesday that neither he nor his investigator, Sonja Willis, specified where Reed had been found when they informed the family of Trey Reed’s death on Monday. Grenada, his childhood hometown, is located roughly an hour east of Cleveland, where he was studying at Delta State University.
“That was never the words that were said when they were notified of his death. Absolutely not. The conversation was that me and my investigator went there (to) the grandparents of Trey Reed, had them sit down on the porch, and we told them that we had been sent to notify them that Trey Reed had been found deceased at Delta State University, and that the (DSU Police) chief was on scene,” Williamson said on Wednesday afternoon.
“I said, and I don’t recall the exact wording, but that they didn’t believe it had been done by anyone else,” he continued. “I handed them the note with the chief’s name and phone number and asked could we pray with them. We prayed, and as we were leaving, the grandmother asked, ‘Was he down on the floor, was he by his bed?’ I said, ‘Ma’am, I do not know.’ And that’s when we walked away.”
At a press conference on Wednesday, Delta State President Dan Ennis acknowledged the painful history that has informed the reaction to Reed’s death.
“We recognize this is not only about facts,” he said. “It’s about emotions and about feelings and the way this loss and how it was discovered affects people’s lives.”
Many social media posts about the case have evoked a darker period in U.S. history when killings of Black people by white vigilantes inflicted racial terror in Mississippi and other parts of the Deep South. They include the infamous lynching of Emmett Till, whose body was found 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Delta State campus.
Marquon McKinney said he and other Black students at Delta State have been shaken by the death.
“Everybody’s upset right now,” McKinney said, adding that he feels that university officials are trying to downplay the death. “It’s a lot of emotions going on.”
McKinney said his mother called him in the middle of a class on Monday to make sure he was OK, before he had learned that someone had been found dead.
Located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, near the Arkansas state line, Delta State had a fall 2024 enrollment of more than 2,600 students, 42% of whom are Black.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has called for the FBI to investigate.
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AP journalist Russ Bynum contributed from Savannah, Georgia.
Read more of the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of Trey Reed’s death here.