The Hinds County coroner has identified Tasia Fortune as the woman found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home in Jackson earlier this week.

Jackson police declined to release details that might explain how Fortune, a 29-year-old Black woman, ended up in the manner she was discovered Monday that evoked memories of the South’s history of lynching.

The coroner’s office said her family has been notified. Her body was sent to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.

LaToni Fortune told Mississippi Today on Wednesday she last saw her sister last month when she returned to Kentucky to visit family.

“She just comes back to Kentucky and visit us or we’ll go to Jackson and visit her,” she said.

It’s unclear how long Tasia Fortune was behind the vacant house before neighbors spotted her and summoned police to the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, a mostly Black neighborhood in west Jackson.

Tommie Brown, public information officer for the Jackson Police Department, declined to release an incident report, saying in an email, “This is an active investigation. We are not able to release any information regarding this case at this time.”

In a similar case, Trey Reed, a Black student at Delta State University, was found hanging on campus last September. 

The results of an independent autopsy on Reed have yet to be released. His family recently revealed to the Mississippi Free Press that his ex-girlfriend shared his suicidal texts with the police, and they haven’t heard from their attorney, Ben Crump, in months.

Crump, a nationally known civil rights attorney, represents the family of Nolan Xavier Wells. Wells died after traveling to Horn Island by boat on July 4 with a group of mostly white friends. His body was found two days later off the island, located about 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

An independent autopsy was unable to determine Wells’ cause of death, while the state autopsy has yet to be released.