Tyrin Truong, the youngest mayor in Bogalusa’s historical past, is now dealing with the combat of his life after being arrested Tuesday (January 7) for his position in an alleged drug trafficking ring.
The 25-year-old mayor is accused of operating a community that moved opioids, marijuana and MDMA — and the timing couldn’t be worse. His arrest comes precisely two years after he was sworn into workplace. The scandal has rocked the small Louisiana city, the place Truong was imagined to be a rising star in native politics.
Authorities say Truong didn’t simply cease at medication; he allegedly used public funds to lease an Airbnb throughout a mayor’s convention in Atlanta, the place he organized “leisure with a prostitute.”
Truong, who was elected to workplace at simply 23 and tied the file for the state’s youngest mayot, had large plans for Bogalusa — a struggling metropolis of about 10,000 close to the Alabama border. However these desires are actually in tatters, with the mayor’s previous catching as much as him in an enormous manner. Northshore District Lawyer Collin Sims didn’t mince phrases when he addressed the case. “This conduct will not be going to be tolerated,” he stated.
“The residents of Bogalusa deserve higher and we’re not completed. We’re simply getting began.”
When Truong took workplace in January 2023, he made headlines as the town’s youngest-ever mayor. However his management was shortly overshadowed by controversy. Simply months after he took the job, he demanded the resignation of the town’s police chief after a tragic loss of life in custody and referred to as for extra legislation enforcement patrols. He even aimed for larger workplace, operating unsuccessfully for chair of the state’s Democratic Celebration.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than cracks started to indicate in his political profession. Final July, the state’s Legislative Auditor’s Workplace accused him of creating improper funds to staff and signing unlawful contracts with distributors. Additionally, his half-brother was arrested in 2023 for a deadly capturing at a highschool basketball sport. Truong disregarded the incident, telling a neighborhood information station, “All of us have relations doing issues we’re not pleased with.”
Truong isn’t the one mayor to get caught up in scandal not too long ago. Throughout the U.S., mayors have discovered themselves in scorching water over every little thing from corruption to felony exercise. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s controversial management model and ethics investigations made headlines, whereas former New York Metropolis Mayor Invoice de Blasio confronted allegations of misuse of marketing campaign funds.
And let’s not overlook about former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who’s at the moment serving a 28-year jail sentence for bribery, extortion and different costs. Seems like Bogalusa’s younger chief is simply the newest in a rising listing of mayors whose actions are removed from the general public belief.
