Just hours before taking his own life, Chicago Board of Education President Michael Scott was asked by a top mayoral aide about questionable credit card expenses, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's press secretary Jacquelyn Heard had a 13-minute call with Scott on Sunday, Nov. 15, according to police reports obtained by the Sun-Times.
Heard reportedly asked to Scott to discuss the expenses with her Monday, a discussion which would have included a Chicago Public School Inspector General investigation.
But that next morning at 3:20 a.m., police found Scott's body in Chicago River by the Merchandise Mart.
"The most perplexing thing to me was how absolutely normal he seemed to me just hours before this incredible tragedy," Heard said, according to the Sun-Times. "It's a scene I've played over and over and over in my head ... It's extremely haunting."
At an unrelated event Saturday, Daley denied the two events were connected.
"They're trying to say that Michael Scott committed suicide over that. I mean, you people are just - I guess you want to dig him out of the grave or something," said the mayor. "It had nothing to do with it. If you could predict why someone committed suicide, you'd be the greatest psychiatrist in the world. It had nothing to do with Michael's death, suicide."
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Read the full story in the Sun-Times.
