Demartravion “Trey” Reed was a 21-year-old student at the Mississippi institution.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Delta State University has been rocked by the discovery of a Black student’s body hanging from a tree in the middle of campus on Monday.
Demartravion “Trey” Reed was a 21-year-old student at the Mississippi institution. Recalling a long, painful history of lynchings, his death has spurred an outpouring of grief and anger across the country.
The Bolivar County Coroner’s Office said on Monday that a preliminary examination of Reed’s body showed no evidence of foul play, including “any lacerations, contusions, compound fractures, broken bones or injuries consistent with an assault.”
But Reed’s family members are calling for their own investigation, including an independent autopsy, and have demanded access to video footage that might reveal more details of his death.
“From the beginning, the family has been seeking transparency in this investigation,” Vanessa J. Jones, an attorney representing the family, told Inside Higher Ed. “Especially after a tragic incident like this occurs, and you’re dealing with a state that has a past history which includes a painful history of racial violence … transparency is paramount.”
The Reed family’s distrust in the handling of the student’s death was deepened when officials allowed his mother to view her son’s body from the neck up only, Jones said.
Officers also shared conflicting details of Reed’s death when they first spoke to his family, Jones said. According to Jones, the Grenada County Sheriff’s Department went to Reed’s grandfather’s home on Monday and said Reed was found dead in his dorm room “from an apparent suicide.”
Prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump has taken on the family’s case and said in a post on X that he will lead a team of civil rights leaders and organizers in “pursuing transparency for Trey’s family.”
“We cannot accept vague conclusions when so many questions remain,” he wrote. Crump described Reed as a “young man full of promise and warmth, deeply loved and respected by all who knew him.”
Lawmakers are also demanding more information.
“We’ll never have true justice for Trey, because that would mean he would still be with us—but there must be answers,” Massachusetts representative Ayanna Pressley wrote on X.
Mississippi representative Bennie G. Thompson called for a federal investigation into Reed’s death.
“It is always a tragedy when a young life is cut short,” Thompson said in a statement. “We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers. While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”
Updates From the University
At a press conference Wednesday, Delta State University president Daniel J. Ennis said Reed’s loss was “devastating” and “the manner of how Trey was discovered has stirred many emotions in this community and many emotions around the state and the nation.”
Ennis reiterated the coroner’s early conclusions but said he recognized the psychological impact of Reed’s death. “This is not only about facts,” Ennis said. “It’s about emotions and it’s about feelings and the way this loss and how it was discovered affects people’s lives.”
Ennis, who is white, said he acknowledged his weakness in not being “adequate to speak to the imagery that this incident raises.”
Delta State serves roughly 2,800 students, about 40 percent of whom are Black. Ennis said the campus has been receiving threatening phone calls and messages since Reed’s death.
“I can say that my heartbreak is comprehensive, not just for Trey—although it is primarily for Trey—but for the fact that the rest of the world has an impression of Delta State that is so at odds with what I know to be this institution,” which is “the joy and the grace of people living and working together and respecting each other,” he said.
Mike Peeler, Delta State University chief of police, told the press that Reed’s body was transported to the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office for a full autopsy on Wednesday morning. Authorities expect preliminary autopsy results within 24 to 48 hours. He said DSU Police, the Cleveland Police Department, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Office planned to update the public on the findings after first meeting with Reed’s next of kin.
He told reporters law enforcement officials were reviewing relevant video, but he couldn’t offer any more details. Peeler also said he had no information about Reed’s family being told his death took place in his dorm room.
He emphasized during the press conference that “this is an isolated incident” and “there are currently no active threats to the campus,” which “remains a safe environment for students, faculty and staff.”
‘Heartbroken’ Students
Nonetheless, the grisly incident has frightened Black students on campus.
“Hearing that happened to another Black student, it really makes me feel unsafe,” a Delta State student, Stacie Hoskins, told WAPT16.
The nature of Reed’s death has had an emotional impact on Black students on other campuses as well; some treated it as a foregone conclusion that Reed was killed and issued statements of support to fellow students.
The Black Student Union at Illinois State University directed students to campus counseling resources, and its executive board said it was “heartbroken by the tragic loss of Trey Reed, whose life was cut short by a horrific act of violence.”
North Carolina A&T University’s NAACP chapter posted on Instagram that Reed “could have been any of us. Any Black student. Any campus.”
“Our education is under attack. Our sanity is under attack. Our very existence is under attack,” the chapter said. “We refuse to stay silent. Black lives matter. Black students matter. Always.”
