Tasia Fortune's Death Was Ruled a Homicide Thursday Night. By Friday Afternoon, Jackson Police Had a Man in Custody on a Murder Charge.

JACKSON, Miss. — Police in Mississippi's capital arrested a man Friday in the death of Tasia Fortune, the 29-year-old Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home last month, a case that drew national attention in a state with a long history of racial violence.

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney told reporters that Jarques Ratliff, 51, was taken into custody on a murder charge. The arrest followed a determination by the state medical examiner's office on Thursday evening that Fortune's death was a homicide. That ruling allowed detectives to execute search and arrest warrants they already had prepared.

Investigators served the search warrants Friday but did not find Ratliff at the location. Officers heading back to headquarters later spotted him walking along Capitol Street and arrested him, Brackney said. He was being held in the Hinds County jail on Saturday. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney.

Brackney said Ratliff had an "association" with Fortune but declined to describe it. She was careful in her language throughout, describing Fortune as found "in a hanging position" and declining to elaborate on the cause of death beyond the homicide classification. She said police had interviewed nearly 15 people, collected forensic evidence and chased leads since Fortune's body was discovered Aug. 3.

"The arrest today is an important development in this investigation, but it is not the conclusion," Brackney said. "This case remains active, and additional arrests will be pending as our investigators continue to follow the evidence wherever it leads, because Tasia and her children deserve nothing less."

The chief acknowledged the weight the case carries. "We understand the questions and the desire for answers given Mississippi's history," she said, while stressing that the investigation must rest on evidence and facts. Fortune died less than a year after two other hanging deaths in the state: Trey Reed, a 21-year-old Black student at Delta State University in Cleveland, and Cory Zukatis, an unhoused white man in his 30s, in Vicksburg. Authorities ruled both suicides. Reed's family and their attorneys called for an independent autopsy and for security camera footage to be released.

Fortune's family had said from the beginning that they did not believe she took her own life. Her mother, Christy Spivey, said that when police told her of the arrest, "I just started crying and told them 'thank you, thank you, thank you.'" Spivey said she did not know Ratliff and was asking her daughter's friends whether they did. Police did not share a motive or say whether DNA led to the arrest. "We still don't have a lot of answers," she said, describing the family as "in disbelief" and in "shock."

Fortune was originally from Kentucky and had lived in Jackson for about a decade. Her obituary remembered her as an "intelligent and talented" woman who ran cross country in her younger years. "Tasia's path was not always easy, and there were highs and lows," it said. "But no matter what, she never lost her faith in God." She leaves four children: Davion, 7, Terence Jr., 5, Tristian, 4, and Donte', 1.