Police in Mississippi have arrested a second man in the death of a Black woman found hanging from a tree and have issued an arrest warrant for a third suspect, reported The Associated Press.
Jackson police said late Tuesday that they arrested
25-year-old Earnest Lloyd Jr. in the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, whose
body was found hanging behind an abandoned home in the city on Aug. 3.
Like Fortune and the first man arrested, 51-year-old
Jarques Ratliff, Lloyd is Black. He appeared at a brief hearing Wednesday,
where he was denied bond.
According to local TV station WLBT, investigators said witnesses
directed them to Lloyd, who had allegedly had a physical altercation with
Fortune days or minutes before she was killed. Police contend that Lloyd hanged
Fortune with a black cable cord, and three co-defendants are also suspected of
being involved in her death, the station reported.
Police and the court clerk said Wednesday that they
didn’t know if Lloyd has a lawyer.
Fortune’s mother Christy Spivey, who attended the
hearing, said afterward that she was ecstatic to see arrests made in her
daughter’s death. She said neither she nor several of her daughter’s friends
knew Lloyd, and she cautioned that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
“My family is not the only family that this is
affecting,” Spivey said of the defendants’ families. “I feel for them as well.
The only difference is that mine can never come back.”
“I’ll never truly have peace,” she said.
Ratliff was arrested in September on murder charges.
He pleaded not guilty and remains jailed without bond. His lawyer, Toney
Baldwin, hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.
Police said in a statement that they issued an arrest
warrant for a third suspect, but gave no details about that person’s identity
or alleged link to Fortune’s death. They also said they expect to issue
additional warrants.
After Ratliff’s arrest, Jackson’s police chief,
RaShall Brackney, said Ratliff had an “association” with Fortune, but she
didn’t elaborate.
Although police haven’t suggested a possible motive
for the killing, the case has attracted widespread attention because the manner
of death recalled
lynchings in the Southern state.
A Kentucky native, Fortune had four children and had
been living in Jackson for about a decade, relatives said.
Spivey previously said her daughter struggled with
homelessness in recent years, and that she wasn’t sure where her daughter was
living at the time of her death. She said that before her death, her daughter
had talked about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in
order.
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