Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Not To Seek Re-election

By R. Siva Kumar - 13 Sep '15 17:19PM

On Friday, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced at a press conference that she will not seek re-election.

So far, her attention was focused on the upcoming trials of six police officers charged with having caused the killing of Freddie Gray. While the decision was surprising to the listeners, the Mayor said that she has been thinking about it for a couple of months.

It is not the right time to spend on a re-election campaign. "I would be taking away from my current responsibility to my city, to the city that I love, the city that I took an oath to serve...And because of that, I have made the decision not to run for re-election," she said, The New York Times reported.

The Mayor has been slammed after the Gray death and the riots that followed. He had been arrested in April and was fatally injured when he was under the charge of the police, with the reason for the death being listed as homicide. A neck injury killed Gray, which he had received when he rode in a police van, according to hngn.

Baltimore has agreed to pay the Gray family $6.4 million to settle a civil suit, according to Fox News.