On September 15, Mississippi was confronted with two deeply disturbing incidents that occurred within hours of each other, two men found hanging from trees in separate locations across the state.
Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Black student at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, was discovered hanging from a tree near the campus pickleball courts around 7:05 a.m. on Monday morning.
University Police Chief Michael Peeler initially stated that there was no evidence of foul play, a position that was maintained throughout the investigation. On Thursday, September 18, the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office officially ruled Reed’s death a suicide following an autopsy. The Cleveland Police Department announced that the findings were “consistent with the initial investigation, determining the cause of death to be hanging and the manner of death as suicide.”
The Bolivar County Coroner’s Office had earlier released a statement confirming that preliminary examination revealed “no lacerations, contusions, compound fractures, broken bones, or injuries consistent with an assault”, directly contradicting viral social media rumors claiming Reed had suffered broken bones.
Despite the official ruling, Reed’s family has refused to accept the conclusions without further investigation. They retained prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who demanded transparency and access to any video footage related to Reed’s death. “Trey’s family deserves answers they can trust. We cannot accept rushed conclusions when the stakes are this high,” Crump stated.
The family’s legal team, led by attorney Vanessa J. Jones, announced plans for an independent autopsy. In a significant development, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick stepped forward to fund this independent examination through his “Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative”. This initiative, launched in 2022, provides free secondary autopsies for families of individuals who died in police-related circumstances.
The discovery of a Black man hanging from a tree inevitably evokes memories of the lynching era. Research by civil rights organizations and historians has revealed a disturbing pattern spanning decades where authorities deliberately misclassified lynchings as suicides to protect white perpetrators and maintain the racial hierarchy of the Jim Crow South.
The NAACP expressed skepticism about the preliminary findings, noting in a statement: “Our people have not historically hung ourselves from trees.”
Democratic U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson has called for a federal investigation into Reed’s death, stating: “We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers. While the details of this case are still unfolding, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”
On the same day as Reed’s body was discovered, another man was found hanging from a tree approximately 100 miles away in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Cory Zukatis, a 36-year-old homeless white man from Brandon, was discovered around 1:30 p.m. on September 15 in a wooded area near the Ameristar Casino.
Warren County Coroner Doug L. Huskey confirmed Zukatis’s death but provided limited details, stating only that he was found in “a wooded area where people who live there are homeless and on drugs”. Unlike Reed’s case, Zukatis’s death received minimal media attention.
The matter was described as “currently being handled as a death investigation,” with officers “actively investigating the circumstances”. Police have stated that the two deaths are not connected, despite occurring on the same day.
Meanwhile, Zukatis’s largely overlooked death highlights how society’s most vulnerable members—the homeless, the mentally ill, the forgotten—often die without the scrutiny their deaths may deserve.
