On December 14, 2010, 56-year-old Clay Duke attended a board meeting of the Bay School District in Panama City, Florida. After a few minutes of deliberation, the meeting was opened up to the local citizenry. That’s when Duke rose from his seat, walked to a nearby wall, and spray-painted the letter “V” inside a red circle. The scrawl was a direct reference to the film V for Vendetta, whose hero—a masked vigilante named “V”—uses the same symbol as his signature trademark. Duke then pulled a gun, and ordered the room to be cleared of all but six board members. “I’m going to die today,” said Duke, as he paced around the podium.
Duke had fallen on hard times. Like so many Americans, he was broke and unemployed. His wife, Rebecca, had been laid off from her job—with the same school district—and was about to receive her last unemployment check. To make matters worse, Duke suffered from a bi-polar disorder and was off his meds. He’d reached his breaking point, and decided to take his own life as a way out of his desperate situation. Unfortunately, he also planned to take a few people with him.
Two of the board members tried to reason with Duke, but to no avail. After a few minutes, he raised his firearm and began shooting. Luckily, none of the bullets made contact with his intended victims. Duke, however, was not so lucky. A security guard returned fire from behind and shot him in the leg. He fell to the ground and turned his gun on himself. That was the end of Clay Duke.
The incident received nationwide coverage, with the mainstream media placing heavy emphasis on Duke’s mental instability and past run-ins with the law. They were also...
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