A Mississippi judge set a $5 million bond Monday for a third man charged in the death of a Black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in August.
\n\nPolice disclosed Friday that Tasia Fortune, 29, was killed before her body was placed in a tree behind an abandoned house in Jackson.
\n\nFortune was Black, and the discovery of her hanging body stoked fear because the scene recalled actual lynchings in the Southern state, which has a long history of racial violence. Some officials had called for a federal civil rights investigation before a Jackson police detective said the scene was “staged.”
\n\n“People justifiably didn’t know if we had a killer on the loose who might hang people for racial reasons,” Judge Jeffery Reynolds said Monday.
\n\nHe said it was a “heinous” act that shocked the state capital.
\n\nReynolds presided at a hearing for Eric Clark, 45, who turned himself in Friday. The Hinds County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him, declined to comment. Clark and two other men charged in Fortune’s death are Black.
\n\nLater outside court, Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney repeated what was disclosed in court Friday, telling reporters that Fortune was killed as…
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