WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY DANIELLE PAQUETTE
AND HENRY WILKINSdakar, senegal — It was al-
most noon in the capital of Burki-
na Faso when the man in black
walked onto an army base, carry-
ing only a backpack.
Guards shouted: Freeze! The
West African nation was deep
into a four-year conflict with Is-
lamist extremists who targeted
military camps and were known
to detonate suicide blasts.
But the man kept moving. Wit-
nesses later described his behav-
ior as “erratic.” Soldiers fired two
shots, striking him in the arm and
thigh, the Burkinabe military
said. What they found in his bag
made the unusual event even
stranger: a U.S. passport.
The man — an American, U.S.
officials confirmed — died hours
later at a nearby hospital in late
November and became the sub-
ject of global fascination online.
He did not appear to be carrying a
weapon, according to the mili-
tary’s report. He had been in the
country for less than three
months.
“What were you doing here,
bro?” asked JT the Bigga Figga, an
American rapper and YouTube
vlogger who lives in Burkina Faso.
“What could you have possibly
been doing here?”
Tourism in the nation of
20 million virtually evaporated
after fighters loyal to al-Qaeda
and the Islamic State began am-
bushing rural villages and attack-
ing hotels that catered to West-
erners.
The State Department advises
Americans to avoid Burkina Faso
due to “COVID-19, terrorism,
crime and kidnapping.” Expatri-
ates in the country tend to work
for aid groups or companies with
private security. But the man who
entered the Baba Sy barracks on
Nov. 21 appeared to have come
alone, rousing suspicions that he
sought to join an extremist group.
Now his family wants to tell
their side of the story.
His name was Jerry Lamont
Cole. He was 41, struggling with
schizophrenia and seeking a fresh
start.
“He wanted to build a better
life for himself,” said Jeremy Cole,
his younger brother in Texas. “He
wasn’t just some ‘erratic’ person.”
He did not speak French, his
brother said, which could help
explain the tragedy. Maybe he was
confused.
Soldiers saw Cole as a “sus-
pect,” according to the military’s
report. They had fired warning
shots, the report said, and he tried
to run away.
Police had detained Cole the
day before for trespassing on an-
other government property, a U.S.
official said. Local authorities re-
leased him with a warning after
determining he was not a threat,
said the official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
he was not authorized to discuss
the matter publicly.
The State Department de-
clined to provide details of Cole’s
arrest and death. “When a U.S.
citizen is detained overseas, the
Department of State works to
provide all appropriate consular
assistance, as was done in this
case,” a spokeswoman said,
speaking on the condition of ano-
nymity in line with department
protocols. U.S. Africa Command
declined to comment on the spe-
cifics of Cole’s case.
Cole approached the barracks
at a particularly tense moment —
the eve of Burkina Faso’s presi-
dential election. Extremists had
threatened to remove the fingers
of anyone who tried to vote. Earli-
er that month, they had killed 13
soldiers in a northern province.
The conflict has steadily wors-
ened since fighters spilled over
the border from Mali in 2016. At
least 425 Burkinabes have died
this year in attacks, according to
the Armed Conflict Location and
Event Data Project, which tracks
casualties.
Cole had never mentioned ex-
tremism before moving to Burki-
na Faso in September, said his
brother, the family’s spokesman.
He was a gentle man who fol-
lowed a strict vegan diet, he said.
Raw vegetables only. He had pet
turtles named after the Ninja Tur-
tles. He practiced meditation. He
talked about aligning his chakras.
Signs of mental illness sur-
faced in his early 20s. He’d jump
from a normally rational mind-
set to utter paranoia, which made
it difficult for him to hold on to a
job.American’s troubled path
to death in Burkina Faso
Over the years, Cole picked up a
list of criminal charges — posses-
sion of marijuana, disorderly con-
duct, resisting arrest — and
sought help for his mental health.
He lived on Social Security pay-
ments in Washington, D.C., after
being diagnosed with schizophre-
nia, his brother said, and had
recently received thousands ofdollars in back pay.
By this summer, Cole could
barely stand living in the United
States.
The racism that long bothered
him, a Black man, was all over
television after George Floyd’s
death sparked global protests,
Jeremy Cole said.
“With the state of politics, he
thought the world was becoming
a less safe place for people who
look like us,” he said. “He wanted
to be somewhere he could feel
safe again.”
Meanwhile, his paranoia was
spiking. Someone bugged his
apartment, he told his family. He
wanted to leave the country as
quickly as possible.
Cole had expressed curiosity
about Africa before discovering
the YouTube channel of JT the
Bigga Figga, the American rapper
who moved to Burkina Faso last
year.
The California-born artist,
whose legal name is Joseph Tom,
lauds the country as a creative
haven to his 34,000 YouTube fol-
lowers. He fell in love with Burki-
na Faso, he said, after a localphilanthropist invited him to vis-
it.
He tells Black Americans:
There’s no racism here.
Cole contacted him in July.
“He said that he was trying to
get out of America,” Tom said.
“That America is starting to be-
come a place that he don’t want to
be anymore. And that’s what
90 percent of the people are say-
ing, man — there’s too much
violence in the community.”
The rapper sold him a small
plot of land — future house in-
cluded — for about $7,000, he
said.
Video shows Cole talking excit-
edly about the project.
“It’s in the making of being
built,” he says in one recording. “I
just bought my land. That’s the
start. I’m glad to be here around
real brothers, man. The real Black
community.”
Cole didn’t reveal much about
himself, though. He seemed
guarded and spoke of “agents”
trailing him, Tom said.
“He said: I’m a leader like you,
you know what I mean?” he said.
“Like, I can make it here withoutyou. I don’t want you to feel like
you’re babysitting me.”
Tom saw him as odd but stable
until he was arrested for trespass-
ing. Cole called him from deten-
tion, he said.
“They interviewed him and
recognized, ‘Okay, well, he didn’t
do nothing. He just didn’t know
where the hell he was supposed to
be,’ ” Tom said. “So they let him
go, right? Then the next day, he
went back somewhere else and
that’s when he got killed.”
Tom vented on his YouTube
channel: “What were you doing
here, bro?”
Then he heard from Cole’s fam-
ily, he said, and it started to make
sense.
“ It was clearly his disorder that
caused him to do what he did,” the
rapper said.
Construction never started on
Cole’s house in Ouagadougou, so
Tom sent his money to the fam-
ily’s GoFundMe.
They’re using it to bring him
home.
[email protected]Wilkins reported from London.LEGNAN KOULA/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
Soldiers patrol United Nations Square in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, o n Nov. 21, the same day an
American, Jerry Lamont Cole, was fatally shot outside a military base on the eve of an election.FAMILY PHOTO
Jerry Lamont Cole sits on a
couch in his childhood house in
Columbia, S.C., in about 2014.
The 41-year-old sought a fresh
start in Burkina Faso this year.Christopher Krebs headed the Cybersecurity andInfrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Departmentof Homeland Security until he was fired by PresidentTrump on Nov. 17. Krebs will join Washington Postcolumnist David Ignatius to discuss his role in the 2020election and current cyber threats facing the country.To register for this event, visit: wapo.st/krebsChristopher KrebsConversationFormer CISA DirectorHosted by The Post’s David IgnatiusWednesday, Dec. 2 at 11:00 a.m. ET