All posts tagged "Mississippi"

Police in Jackson, Mississippi, have arrested a man in connection with the death of Tasia Fortune, the 29-year-old Black woman found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home last month, after the state medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, CNN reported.

The suspect, who has not been publicly identified, was taken into custody as he walked along a city street, Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney said at a Friday news conference. More arrest warrants are expected in the case, the chief said.

Fortune's death, first reported after her body was discovered in the 500 block of Road of Remembrance, drew national attention and demands for answers from her family, who did not believe she took her own life. Police said they had treated the case as a homicide from the start while awaiting the autopsy findings, which the medical examiner has now confirmed....

A federal judge on Friday shot down a Republican effort to eliminate the only Black-majority judicial district in Mississippi, Democracy Docket reported.

In early July, a group of white voters filed a suit that took aim at the sole majority-Black judicial subdistrict in DeSoto County, where Black residents make up more than one-third of the population, according to Democracy Docket. U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, a Bush appointee, ruled that the challenge came too close to the November election.

Mississippi picks some of its judges through a judicial subdistrict, according to reporting by Mississippi Today. The judicial subdistrict is a smaller slice of a larger court district, but the judge it selects hears cases from the whole district....

Police have arrested a rape suspect in the case of a 13-year-old Mississippi girl who delivered a baby after she was unable to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy, reported TIME Magazine on Thursday.

"Ashley's mother, Regina, told TIME in a text message Sept. 5 that police informed her a suspect had been arrested in the case," reported Charlotte Alter, noting that the names Ashley and Regina are pseudonyms to protect the survivor's anonymity. "The Clarksdale police department sent TIME a press release stating that a 16-year-old male had been arrested and charged with rape on Sept. 5, and a spokesperson subsequently confirmed that the arrest was tied to Ashley's case." Police reportedly used DNA evidence to make the identification.

The story of this pregnancy blew up in recent weeks, after it was revealed Ashley gave birth to the infant, identified as Peanut....

Rolling Fork (United States) (AFP) - As the thunder roared outside and the lights inside Chuck's Dairy Bar began to blink, owner Tracy Harden realized the tornado conditions forecasted for her small Mississippi town Friday night were far more severe than she realized. "Cooler!" yelled out Harden, and she, her husband and their employees scrambled into a giant gray metal box -- normally used to keep the restaurant's food refrigerated, but which that night saved nine lives in the shattered small town of Rolling Fork.  The tornado cut a trail of havoc more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) long acr......

Rolling Fork (United States) (AFP) - A brick house reduced to rubble, its floors strewn with personal effects like a pink backpack and a bottle of shampoo, somehow standing upright. That's just one of many scenes of the utter devastation left by a tornado that ripped through the southern US state of Mississippi Friday night. And shell-shocked residents of the shattered town of Rolling Fork are now grappling with how much their lives changed in the blink of an eye. At least 25 people were killed, 13 of them in this town of 2,000 people. On Sunday morning, under skies that were blue for the time......

Washington (AFP) - At least 23 people were killed as a devastating tornado ripped across the southern US state of Mississippi, tearing off roofs, smashing cars and flattening entire neighborhoods. The powerful storm system, accompanied by thunderstorms and driving rain, cut a path of more than 100 miles (60 kilometers) across Mississippi late Friday, slamming several towns along the way. The state's emergency management agency said Saturday that at least four people were missing and dozens more were injured, while tens of thousands of people in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee were without p......