La. Mayor's Death Sparks Controversy

Gerald Washington, 57, was a Vietnam veteran, a retired refinery supervisor who spent 12 years as a city councilman. He stood about 6-feet-5 and enjoyed rumbling around town on his Harley Davidson, dressed in leather pants and chaps. Colleagues described him as magnetic, outgoing and always friendly.

"He had a smile that would just light up this room," said the outgoing mayor, Dudley Dixon. "He had a just dominating personality."

Washington's popularity was obvious: He defeated a white opponent in last fall's election with 69 percent of the vote in this town, which is 80 percent white. Westlake, population 4,500, is near Lake Charles, about 200 miles west of New Orleans.

On the day of his death, Washington met Dixon about noon at City Hall, where he learned about the alarm system. The men lowered the flag to half-staff, to commemorate the death of former President Ford.

A passing motorist called 911 just before 10 p.m., after spotting Washington's body in the parking lot of the school administration building that used to be Mossville High, where Washington went to school and played basketball. Washington lay on his back, in a T-shirt and baseball cap, the coroner's office said.

Near the body was a pearl-handled revolver. On Washington's body investigators found a betting slip from Delta Downs from 4:44 p.m.

The coroner said the reaction of Washington's family to the suicide finding _ disbelief _ is not unusual.

"Almost every case of suicide is like that," he said. "Suicides give us more grief than anything else."

That explanation hasn't dampened rumors in town, particularly among blacks, that it should be a murder case.

"Someone lured him to Mossville," said Pat Hartman, 61, a lifelong resident of Mossville, the neighboring town where she and Washington went to school. "Why would he want to go to Mossville, to kill himself at his alma mater?"

"That boy didn't kill himself. Somebody killed him."