The body of a gay black male escort has been found at the home of top Democratic donor Ed Buck.
And not for the first time.
Paramedics arrived at Buck’s apartment in West Hollywood, California, after 1am yesterday—where they found an unresponsive black male. After attempts to revive the man failed, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Jarringly, the incident is extremely similar to something that happened at Buck’s apartment just 18 months ago: another black man, 26-year-old Gemmel Moore, was found dead of a drug overdose.
“It is suspicious that this has happened twice now,” Derrick Alfred, Sheriff’s Lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Offie, told local news station KTLA. “So we’re going to conduct a thorough investigation to determine if it is criminal in nature.”
Buck—who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to top Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Sen. Kyrsten Gillibrand of Arizona—has not yet been named a suspect and has not yet been arrested.
Through his attorney, Seymour Master, Buck denied responsibility for his death—claiming that the man, a longtime friend of Buck’s, had “already been partying” and “already taken some substances” when he arrived at the apartment, before apparently dropping dead while Buck was in the shower.
But that might not be good enough to get Buck out of hot water: soon after the suspicious death, a mob appeared outside his house–demanding his arrest.
“This man has had two dead bodies in his house and he’s still in his house,” said community activist Jasmyne Cannick, who led the protest. “The fact that Ed Buck is a prominent Democratic donor should concern us all.”
“He needs to be arrested, he needs to be sent to county jail with no bail, he needs to be charged and then he needs to be convicted and sent to prison,” she added. “Not just for the person who died today, but also for Gemmel Moore’s death, it wasn’t thoroughly investigated.”
