A Democratic city council president in Pennsylvania openly confessed during a public meeting this week to shooting a man in the head as a teenager—and never faced criminal charges.
Mel Witherspoon, now 80, made the jaw-dropping revelation during a bi-monthly City Council meeting in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The longtime local official described events from his youth in Newark, New Jersey, where he said he was involved in a gang and carried out a point-blank shooting that resulted in the death of another man.
“I’m 17. I’m involved with a gang, the largest gang in Newark, New Jersey. I organize. We went over to Jersey City looking for the person,” Witherspoon recalled, according to The Gateway Pundit.
“Well, when we got there, we didn’t realize it was a family. And when you talk Jersey City and you talk family, you’re talking the mafia.”
According to Witherspoon, he had relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, at the time of the incident.
He described purchasing a firearm there and living in an apartment where several individuals visited him and got high, allegedly on marijuana.
What followed, however, was far more serious.
“They left. I had the clip in my gun. Nick came into my room,” Witherspoon said. “I said, ‘You know, Nick, I can blow your head off.’ He said, ‘Go ahead.’ And I did.”
“I shot him in the head point-blank. This close,” he added, gesturing near his own head to emphasize the proximity of the shot.
The council president did not appear to realize he had made a public admission of murder, but the meeting was recorded and is now circulating online.
Despite the gravity of the confession, Witherspoon claimed he was only briefly detained and never charged due to the influence of family members with ties to organized crime.
“I stayed in jail one night,” he said. “I never went to court and went back to [playing basketball]. How did that happen? Because I had a family member, one of my uncles, he was involved with one of the families,” referring to the mafia.
“That family made a call to Newark from New York to Omaha, Nebraska where I was at, and I was out the next day.”
If Witherspoon’s account is accurate, the killing would have occurred around 1961 or 1962.
Witherspoon would have been 17 years old, and neither Nebraska nor Pennsylvania has a statute of limitations for murder, meaning legal action can still be taken, GP reports.
The Erie City Council has not yet issued a formal response to the remarks, and it remains unclear whether local or federal authorities are investigating the claims.
Many conservative commentators and social media users are questioning the double standard in how such a confession would be treated if it had come from a Republican—particularly one aligned with President Donald Trump.
There has been no known comment from law enforcement regarding the validity of Witherspoon’s claims or any potential investigation into the incident.
As of now, Witherspoon remains in office.
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