Convicted Killer of Marine Elected to Colorado School Board

A man who served time for murdering a Marine is now serving on a Colorado school board.

Voters recently elected Thomas Seaba to the East Otero School Board in La Junta. Seaba spent more than a decade in a North Carolina prison after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the death of a fellow Marine in the '90s.

Col. Donnie Worrell told KKTV that Seaba shot his fellow Marine five times, including in the back of the head.

"Anyone who shoots someone five times in the head, you know, no doubt it was a cold-blooded killing," Worrell, the detective on Seaba's case, said.

Seaba told KKTV that the incident took place on a night in 1997 in a Jacksonville parking lot where his friend was holding a gun. Seaba said the friend handed it to Seaba, who dropped it and the gun went off.

"From that point on I've never really had a full grasp of what occurred," he told WITN. "I have no clear memory of what happened."

Seaba was released from prison in March 2010, moved back to Colorado and started working for the city's wastewater department, which he now runs. He served 13 years in prison.

Seaba said he now wants to help his community. "It was obvious[ly] a set of horrific mistakes compounding on one another, which led to me serving time in prison," he told KKTV.

School district officials said they were aware of Seaba's record.

"We researched to see what the criteria was," Rick Lovato, East Otero School District's superintendent, told CBS4. "It is not outside of the rights of a person with a felony conviction to run for the office."

The school board does not bar people from running for office if they have a felony conviction unless it was a sexual offense against a child.

"If you are a good person and something bad happened to you, or whatever, do the time but then spend the rest of your life making it right," Rick Klein, La Junta city manager, told KKTV. "Thomas has done that."