La. mayor's death sparks controversy

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

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

A few hours later he indulged in a hobby, placing a $4 bet at a nearby horse racing track.

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 was found by the body.

The coroner and the sheriff have pronounced Washington's death a suicide — a finding that has embroiled this oil-refinery town in conspiracy theories, with Washington's kin 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 that Washington killed himself.