Bubba Copeland shot himself in front of police on Friday, days after he begged 1819 News not to expose his private life.

A small-town Alabama pastor and mayor killed himself Friday, days after a local conservative news website published a story that included photos of him wearing women’s clothing and makeup.

F.L. “Bubba” Copeland, who was the mayor of Smiths Station and the pastor at First Baptist Church in Phenix City, shot himself in front of police during a welfare check, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said.

Copeland’s private life was exposed Wednesday by the conservative blog 1819 News, which was once owned by the right-wing Alabama Policy Institute and whose top editor is a former Breitbart News contributor.

  • @[email protected]English
    -8•8 months ago

    We’re taking the cops word because this was the damned mayor, not some random person (or minority) they pulled over, fucked up and decided they could hide it.

    • athos77
      69•8 months ago

      Counterpoint: it’s the mayor of a small town in Alabama. The same Alabama that locked the new mayor out of City Hall because the mayor was Black, and they’d simply been passing the mayorship down through generations without actually bothering to hold elections or anything. Alabama is all sorts of fucked up, and their state motto is “Thank God for Mississippi”.

    • @[email protected]
      40•8 months ago

      Being mayor of a small town doesn’t buy you much with the police. The mayor of a small town near where I grew up got swatted by police after someone sent weed to his address that the police were following. The mayor had nothing to do with the weed they just happened to pick his house. The cops didn’t even check who lived at the address and shot the family’s two golden retrievers.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor's_residence_drug_raid