A former mayor of a South Dakota town has been charged with murder after a triple-slaying Monday night in the community he once oversaw, according to the state’s attorney general.
Jay Ostrem, 64, was being held in the Minnehaha County Jail on $1 million cash bond on three counts of first-degree murder, Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a statement Tuesday.
“There is no further threat to the public,” Jackley said after he announced the arrest in the fatal shootings.
The names of the victims have not been released because their relatives have not been notified, authorities said.
Ostrem is representing himself in the legal case, according to court documents.
He became Centerville’s mayor in May 2009, and the City Council accepted his resignation in November 2011, according to city documents.
Those documents did not specify why Ostrem resigned.
In July 2010, the city’s former police chief filed a federal lawsuit against Centerville and Ostrem.
The suit, which is ongoing, accuses Ostrem of sexual harassment.
“Ostrem also made gender-based comments … which were unwelcome and degrading,” the lawsuit said.
The suit alleged that he remarked about menstruation, a “man’s job” and women’s inability to be as successful as men, the suit said.
The former chief did not receive any disciplinary action or reports against her until she alleged discrimination to the state’s Division of Human Rights in October 2009, according to the lawsuit.
Centerville, which is about 250 miles southeast of Pierre, the state capital, has a population of fewer than 1,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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