Rickey Smiley expressed concern over the recent hanging death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune in Mississippi.
In a livestream video, the host of The Rickey Smiley Morning Show advised Black women to arm themselves and to be aware of their surroundings.
He also urged women to give friends and family their location and to wear META glasses to record their surroundings.
“It’s a shame that we have to do that … especially if you live in a Mississippi or an Alabama, or Florida, Georgia, Tennessee or Kentucky,” said the stand-up comedian and father-of-6.
“If you live in the South, you gonna have to move and operate a certain kind of way, because it’s dangerous,” he added.
Smiley also mentioned the dozens of Black women reported missing in the South.
“How in the hell is all these Black women coming up missing?”
Tasia Fortune was found hanging from a tree in the backyard of an abandoned house in Jackson on August 3.
The Hinds County chief medical examiner conducted an autopsy to confirm the cause and manner of death.
A spokesperson for the Jackson Police Department (JPD) said they are investigating Fortune’s death.
Fortune’s mother insists the mom-of-4 did not take her own life.
“This has just devastated us,” Christy Spivey told ABC News. “Tasia was strong-minded, she was full of laughs and love, she had faith in God… She had so little and gave so much.”
Spivey said that she last saw her daughter on July 26 after she traveled from her home in Mississippi to Kentucky for a family reunion.
“She was better than I had seen her in a long time. She was at peace,” Spivey said. “She did not do this to herself. I know my daughter and she did not do this to herself.”