Erie, Pennsylvania town council president admits to shooting man in 1960s

During a regular session of the Erie City Council on Wednesday, Mel Witherspoon, president of the body, made a startling statement: he claimed that, in the 1960s when he was a young man, he shot a man in the head in Nebraska, spent a night in jail and was never prosecuted for the incident.

The remarks come in the context of a more than two-hour meeting in which community members expressed concern over the death of Marchello D. Woodard, a 43-year-old man shot to death by a state probation officer in early July in eastern Erie.

Witherspoon, now 80 and known for his career as a basketball standout at Gannon University in the 1960s, recounted the incident from the council dais.

In the video, the president recounts the event, "I shot him in the head point blank... I stayed in jail one night, I never went to court... that 'family' [mafia] made a call... and I was out the next day."

According to notes from the Erie Times-News the event occurred while he was a student at Scottsbluff Junior College in Nebraska, before transferring to Erie to complete his studies at Gannon, where he graduated in 1968. Witherspoon, originally from the central borough of Newark, New Jersey, publicly acknowledged in the past his gang affiliation during his youth.

The town council president claimed that the man he shot was a college soccer player he knew in Scottsbluff and that he survived the incident after being hospitalized for "three or four days."

Witherspoon said he had shared this story in the past, including in talks with local youths, with the purpose of inspiring them to follow a good path. "When something like (Woodard's shooting) happens, I get flashbacks," he told the Erie Times-News, referring to the recent case that has shocked the community.

Details about what supposedly happened in 1962

An article in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, published on August 29, 1962, corroborates the existence of the shooting. According to the newspaper, Witherspoon, then 17, was involved in an incident in which an 18-year-old native of Ashtabula, Ohio was shot in the face.

The victim, according to the media outlet, stated to authorities that he and Witherspoon were "playing with" a firearm when it went off. The article notes that the wound was to the left side of the face and that the victim was able to communicate with police and doctors after arriving at the hospital.

Witherspoon claimed that, after spending a night in prison, he faced no trial and attributed his release to an alleged intervention by an uncle with connections in organized crime, who would have arranged his release by “a call from Newark, to New York, to Omaha, to Nebraska.” And after that, he said, "I went back to basketball."

At this time, no official reactions have been reported from local officials or the city council regarding the statements.