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New mayor's death sparks controversy

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 6, 2007

WESTLAKE, La. - In the hours before his death Dec. 30, the first black mayor of this overwhelmingly white town of 4,500 started learning his new job.

About noon, he set City Hall's alarm system for the first time. He learned how to raise and lower the U.S. flag. He had already ordered a new mayoral letterhead with his name and a button-down shirt embroidered "Gerald Washington, Mayor."

But by 10 p.m. Gerald "Wash" Washington was dead in the deserted parking lot of a former high school, a bullet wound in his chest, his gun by the body.

The coroner and sheriff have pronounced Washington's death a suicide, a finding that has embroiled this town in conspiracy theories, with Washington's relatives and friends insisting he had no reason to end his life.

Some have accused police of covering up a murder - perhaps a racially motivated one.

"This is the South, so of course everybody's going to say it was some white guy shooting a black guy," said Dr. Terry Welke, the Calcasieu Parish coroner who ruled Washington killed himself.

Welke said soot from the pistol was deep in the wound, indicating the gun was touching Washington's chest when fired. That, he said, suggests suicide. He also said that while most gunfire suicides involve a bullet to the head, it is not unusual for people to shoot themselves in the chest.

But the coroner and the sheriff have offered no reason why Washington would have killed himself. No suicide note was found. There is no evidence he bade farewell to anyone, put his financial affairs in order or gave any other sign he was about to kill himself, authorities said.

Washington's son, Geroski, accused the Sheriff's Office of doing a sloppy job and asked the state police to take over the investigation.

State police entered the case this week and took the body to Baton Rouge for another autopsy. Friends of Washington's family are being interviewed, but the state police would not comment on the investigation.

Gerald Washington, 57, was a Vietnam veteran, a retired refinery supervisor who spent 12 years as a City Council member.

He defeated a white opponent last fall with 69 percent of the vote in this town, which is 80 percent white. Westlake is near Lake Charles, about 200 miles west of New Orleans.

A passing motorist saw Washington's body just before 10 p.m outside the school administration building that used to be Mossville High, where Washington went to school.

[Last modified January 6, 2007, 00:36:51]