The Governor of San Andreas died in the hours after the earthquake, according to internal State documents obtained by Weazel News and three people inside the Governor’s office. Weazel News has not been able to independently confirm the death, and the State has made no announcement.
The documents are a continuity-of-government notice and a two-page extract from a medical log kept at the Fort Zancudo military reservation. They say the Governor suffered a heart attack minutes after the main shock struck Los Santos, shortly after 8pm on Friday 25 September, was flown to the reservation that night and died there early on Saturday morning.
If they are right, the State’s first statement since the earthquake, issued on Saturday and signed by Harlan J. Mercer, Chief of Staff to the Governor, described the Governor as “safe, well rested” and leading the State “from a secure location” several hours after the Governor had died. It also ended with a message in the Governor’s name.
This is the most serious claim Weazel News has ever published about the government of this State. Below we set out exactly what we have seen, what our sources say, and what we have not been able to check.
What the documents say
The first document is a one-page notice headed “Continuity of Government: Interim Arrangements”, marked “restricted: principals only” and time-stamped 05:40 on Saturday 26 September. It refers throughout to “the Principal”, which our sources say is the term the Governor’s office uses internally for the Governor. It states that “following the death of the Principal”, the powers of the office are to be exercised under “interim continuity arrangements” until “succession is formalised”.
The notice instructs that “no public announcement is to be made pending formal succession”, and that “public communications will continue to issue from the Office of the Chief of Staff under existing delegated authority”. It does not name a successor.
The second document is an extract from a medical log. It records a “suspected cardiac event” at 20:09 on Friday, with the Principal “collapsed, unresponsive” and resuscitation under way while an air evacuation was arranged. It records arrival at the reservation’s medical station at 21:52 and repeated attempts through the night to restore a stable heart rhythm. Its final entry, at 03:47 on Saturday, records that life was pronounced extinct. The log does not say where the patient was when the collapse happened, or why the flight took so long to arrive.
The log does not name the patient, and neither does the notice. Both carry the same reference number, which our sources say is the one the office assigns to the Governor. Weazel News is not publishing either document in full, to protect the people who provided them.
What we could and could not verify
The documents reached Weazel News separately, from two different people. The reference number and the times match across both. Their layout, headings and security markings match other internal State papers this newsroom has seen, including the contingency memo on martial law we reported on 25 September.
Three people who work in the Governor’s office each told us, separately, that the Governor is dead. Two of them are the sources who told Weazel News on Friday that staff had been ordered to pack records and report to Paleto Bay. All three asked not to be named because they fear losing their jobs. None of them saw the Governor die. Two say they were told on Saturday morning at Fort Zancudo and instructed not to discuss it.
We have not seen a death certificate, spoken to any doctor who treated the Governor, or seen the Governor’s body. We cannot rule out that the documents are forged, or that the patient in the log is someone else. No agency has confirmed the death to Weazel News.
As far as Weazel News is aware, the Governor has not been seen in public or photographed since the earthquake, and no recording of the Governor has been released. The only statement the office has issued since then was signed by Mercer.
We put the claims to the Governor’s office in writing on Sunday and asked it to confirm or deny that the Governor is alive. It did not respond. Its press office says replies to its statements “are not monitored”. Military press officers at the reservation did not answer questions about its medical station.
“Safe, well rested”
Saturday’s statement froze all disaster aid. It recognised only fourteen deaths, against the at least 700 since counted by the Los Santos Fire Department, and it ended with a message from the Governor calling earthquakes “a natural and much-loved part of life in San Andreas”. The same message announced the Los Santos Resilience Commemorative Coin, on sale for $49.99 plus shipping.
According to the log, by the time that statement went out the Governor had been dead for several hours.
“The message went out in the Governor’s name,” one of the sources said. “By then there was no Governor to send it.”
A second source said the message had been “drafted by staff, like everything else since Friday”, and that nobody in the room had asked who was approving it.
Who has been running the State?
If the documents are genuine, San Andreas has had no living Governor since early on Saturday, and possibly no Governor able to make decisions since shortly after 8pm on Friday. According to the notice, no successor had formally taken office when it was written.
That raises questions the State has not answered. Who ordered the aid freeze? Who decided the State would recognise only fourteen deaths, and reclassify the rest as “pre-existing, lifestyle-related, or firearm-related”? Who told the public that “no aircraft was lost over Mission Row”, when the Air National Guard now says one was? Who approved the curfew in Paleto Bay, and the use of the Emergency Land Stewardship Act to treat homes as “presumed abandoned”, a clock that runs out on Monday evening?
Every one of those decisions was announced over one signature: Harlan J. Mercer’s. A Chief of Staff is not elected, and the notice itself says Mercer’s office is acting under “existing delegated authority”, authority that, if the documents are right, was delegated by a Governor who had already died.
What the law says
San Andreas law provides for the powers of the Governor to pass to a successor if the Governor dies in office, and requires that successor to take the oath of office before acting as Governor.
“The line of succession exists so that there is never a gap,” said a former State legislative counsel, who asked not to be named. “A Chief of Staff has no powers of their own, only what the Governor delegates. Nothing in the law provides for a death to be kept quiet while staff carry on issuing orders. If the Governor has died, somebody should already have been sworn in, publicly. If nobody has, then the question is whether any order issued since Saturday morning is valid at all.”
In Paleto Bay
When Weazel News described the documents to evacuees in Paleto Bay, the first reaction was disbelief.
“They told us the Governor was fine,” said Rosa, who has been living in her car outside a motel on the Great Ocean Highway since Friday night. “They told us fourteen people died. I don’t believe anything they say any more. So I don’t know what to believe about this either.”
A retired teacher from Mirror Park, who asked not to be named, said: “If it’s true, I’m sorry for the family. But then who froze the money? Who’s been signing everything? Somebody has to answer that.”
Weazel News will report any response from the Governor’s office, or from anyone able to confirm or deny the Governor’s death. Until then, this remains unconfirmed. If you have information, the Weazel News tip line is open.
