Town Mourns Mayor Slain at Council Meeting
More than 2,000 grieving townspeople, friends and family members gathered Sunday to mourn their mayor, shot to death at a City Council meeting here by a man who had complained about sewer problems.
An honor guard of 31 police officers, some wearing black bands on their badges, saluted as Edward King’s coffin was wheeled from a church in this southeastern Iowa town of 7,300 people.
“We come together in grief and shock,” the Rev. George White said at the service. “We are hurt. We are wounded.”
Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), a friend of King’s, said that the town’s loss was also the entire state’s.
Mount Pleasant businesses closed Sunday for the service. Some townspeople gathered outside in 30-degree weather to watch the funeral procession, led by 14 city, county and state police cars.
King, 53, died early Thursday after a man entered the council chambers as a Wednesday night meeting was winding down, pulled out a .22-caliber semi-automatic pistol and shot King and council members Ronald Lee Dupree and Jo Ann E. Sankey.
Dupree was in good condition and Sankey remained in critical condition Sunday at University Hospitals in Iowa City.
Ralph Orin Davis, 69, of Mount Pleasant, charged with murdering King, remained in jail Sunday in lieu of $700,000 bail.
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