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Mayor attends prayer vigil in 1st public appearance in 6 days
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BATON ROUGE – Mayor Kip Holden made his first public appearance at a prayer service at St. Aloysius Church one week after the shooting death of Alton Sterling on July 5.
Holden described the service as “very emotional” and explained his standpoint on Sterling’s death as well as the recent police shootings in Dallas.
“There are too many divisions and we have to pull together because we are all worshiping and praising the same God,” Holden began by saying.
Holden went on to address what some call his recent “hiding” from the public since Sterling's death and the protests that followed.
“You have a lot of people who want to take hot shots at you, they want to tell you that you should be here, you should be there, but they don’t know where I’ve been but yet they’re making an assumption that I’m not anywhere,” Holden said.
Holden said that he has had multiple briefings in the past week on what has taken place.
The mayor also reiterated the fact that Baton Rouge needs to come together as a city and not blame one another.
“When you look at tonight, we must concentrate on still healing each other and not pointing the finger at each other because at the end of the day we all are one in terms of whether or not you are a citizen of Baton Rouge, whether you just come here and work, we all are one,” he said.
“It is now for us to do some deep soul searching and look at the things that bring us together and build on those,” Holden said.
See below for the full prayer service and interview with Mayor Kip Holden:
In a report Monday, the Investigative Unit detailed concerns about the Mayor's whereabouts. You can read that story here.
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