Federal agents have been called in to probe the discovery in Claiborne County, Mississippi, of an African American man found hanging from a tree on Thursday.
The Department of Justice has confirmed in a statement that three separate branches of the federal government have been mobilized to carry out the investigation: the FBI, the civil rights division of the Department of Justice and the US attorney for the southern district of Mississippi.
The speed with which federal agencies were dispatched, and the involvement of civil rights officials, indicate concern, at least initially, that the black man’s death may be suspicious. According to a tweet from Melissa Faith Payne, a reporter with Fox40 News, the body was not allowed to be taken down from the tree until FBI and Mississippi detectives had completed their crime scene investigation.
Local reports named the deceased as Otis Byrd, 54, who disappeared 10 days ago after a friend dropped him off at a casino in Vicksburg. He had not been heard from since.
According to the Clarion-Ledger newspaper, the body was found in woods near Roddy Road, about half a mile from Byrd’s last known residence.
The death has attracted the immediate attention of the Mississippi branch of the civil rights group the NAACP. It called on the DoJ to step into the investigation after the grim discovery, as did the local sheriff’s office.
The discovery of a dead black man in such disturbing circumstances inevitably causes alarm in the Deep South, given its long history of racial violence. The death of the black teenager Lennon Lacy, who was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina, in August, has raised similar suspicions among his family and has also attracted the attention of the FBI.
