On the early morning of Sept. 15, 2025, Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old college student, was found hanging from a tree at his college, Delta State University. Reed’s death was initially ruled as a suicide by police, but many believe foul play was at hand due to injuries suspected to be present on his body.
Mississippi has a history rooted in racist crimes against African-American citizens, being the last state to abolish slavery on Feb. 7, 2013. The state ratified the 13th amendment, but failed to complete the required paperwork when they initially ratified it in 1995. Slavery as a whole was banished in 1865 but Mississippi refused to recognize the 13th amendment. Mississippi isn’t new to crimes such as these and has a long history of racially motivated incidents that were looked over by the police. Additionally, various hate crimes, such as the lynching of Emmett Till, have occured in Mississippi.
Interestingly, Trey Reed’s body was found only 30 minutes down the road from where Emmett Till was found. In the past decade, a few other African-American male bodies have also been discovered in similar manners to Reed, raising suspicion from his family.
In 2019 a young black man by the name of Willie Andrews Jones Jr. was also hung from a tree only a couple of meters from his white girlfriend’s house. Jones Jr. and his girlfriend, Alexis Leann Rankin, had a young 3-month-old child together and were going through a rough patch in their relationship. They parted ways when they arrived at her parents home, only for Rankin’s step-father to phone the police some time later about Jones‘ death. When police arrived on scene they found his body hanging from a tree with a cloth belt around his neck.
Although they initially ruled the incident as a suicide, Jones’ family was later awarded 11.4 million dollars in compensation for a wrongful-death suit as Jones Jr. was actually lynched. His story is just one example of police wrongfully interpreting a cause of death. Reed’s family had their own suspicions that Trey Reed did not hang himself. They were initially told that Reed was found in his bed, however this did not align with reports of his body being found hanging from a tree on school grounds.
Trey Reed’s family set up a funeral service for him and hired lawyers to pursue a second autopsy to confirm the cause of death. Although the initial report recorded no wounds were found on Reeds’ body, others suspect more may be at hand. Colin Kaepernick, an American civil rights activist, announced that he would fund a second autopsy to discover wounds that may have been missed initially. The results of this second autopsy have not been released yet.
Mississippi’s history is rooted in racist crimes against African-Americans. Trey Reed was not the first to be a victim of these hate crimes and his family continues to search for the true cause of his death.
