Duke shot himself after firing at school board members during a meeting Tuesday. No one else was hurt. Before opening fire, he painted a red V on a wall and talked about his wife being fired.
Officials say she worked for the schools, but it wasn’t clear whether she resigned or had been fired or what her job was. She was apparently living with her mother in a nearby town. Van Etten says the shooting was not “spur of the moment.” Police also found anti-government paraphanelia in Duke’s home.
The entire school board shooting was captured on camera, as Melissa Bell explained:
In the chilling video captured by a WMBB News 13 camera, the board members try to reason with Duke and try to save one another from the gunman.
Ginger Littleton, one school board member, stayed in the room even after Duke ordered her to leave. In the video, she swings her purse at him, in an attempt to knock the gun out of Duke’s hand. She falls to the ground, and Duke stands over her but does not kill her. Another school board member comes back into the room at that time and asks the gunman to let Littleton leave, which Duke does.
At another point, Superintendent Bill Husfelt asks Duke to let everyone else go, saying Husfelt was likely the one responsible for firing Duke’s wife. Duke turns his gun on Husfelt and fires, but the bullets miss Husfelt.
Expect to see much more of this in the coming days, weeks, years.
Insane.
I’m disappointed none of the board persons had a CCW and the security guard was a terrible shot when he finally arrived.
>> Benjamin said, on December 15th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
>> Obviously a leftist nut who was mad that his wife lost her government paid job. She was probably a union member.
Yeah. Right.
It’s the LIBERALS who are known to be trigger-happy gun clutching nuts.
BTW, is there ANY tragedy you won’t shamelessly politicize with pure BSing speculation?
My God, he handles a gun worse than Sarah Palin.
Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…
Time Magazine’s Disturbed Douchebag of the Year.
Don’t mess with the union…
The only thing I have against Guy Fawkes is that he failed.
#29 Bobbo
The media in Tampa, Florida is carrying this a lot because the gunman graduated from an area high school in the early 1970s. There is an interview with a neighbor who still lives on the street what the shooter grew up on. Why is that being covered? Is there any other Tampa connection?
He was upset about a new tax (Right?) and that his wife was fired (Left?).
One of the school board members asks after the suicide was he using a pop gun?
I’m wondering if he was intoxicated – from his gate walking into the room. There should be a toxicology test. I also thought that he might be wearing a bullet-proof vest as he walked in.
Some people (the government sponsored media) don’t want you to know that this is just a viral video to promote season 2 of V.
Seriously though, I tip my hat to DU for devolving into political squabbling so quickly over this.
#24 Thank you. You just proved many of my core points.
Perhaps if this country had a real border with Mexico, criminals wouldn’t be arriving in hordes, and we wouldn’t have Mexican gangs in CA.
Perhaps if criminals convicted of capital offenses were executed, we wouldn’t have so many people in jail.
Perhaps if we did not have so many criminals in the United States, I wouldn’t need to carry a Ruger LCR with Crimson Trace lasers day in and day out.
And perhaps if people like you quit trying to disarm me, I wouldn’t have to spend my time explaining my Constitutional rights (established by far wiser people than you or I) to people who don’t know what the first ten amendments are, what they are for, and why we need the 2nd to keep them all.
#9 Ed Zepp –
There’s already discussion about school board meeting security. Here come the back scatter scanners.
Whats so graphic about this? They air worse everyday on True TV.
This pantload fired a couple rounds, missing everything and then caught a round in the ass and fell down. JackAss or NitroCircus has worse spills and tumbles.
Is this graphic because this dipshit took a 9mm aspirin later off-camera? If you want something graphic, go look up Budd Dwyer.
Faxon,
Like you, I’m a constitutional originalist.
So, I strongly defend your right to own a musket as long as you are a member of a well regulated militia.
I think muskets are better. This lazy bastard couldn’t hit the broad side of Chris Christie’s ass with an automatic pistol. With a musket you had one shot to make it count or you got skewered by some redcoat with a British sword.
Ah you crazy Americans and your guns, clutching them tightly to fight off your perceived boogeymen. How sad to live in fear all the time.
Good to know that fpp2002 thinks the above video shows a “perceived boogeyman”. It’s all a Hollywood TV show I guess. That thing in his hand was ejecting little balls of cheer and good fortune or fairy kisses. Maybe I should tell one of my CCW students that the guy she fended off with a gun I taught her to use at 2am in her house that attempted to rape her was just “perceived” as a bad guy. Rape is just a loving, caring thing people do.
I’ll get on the horn ASAP and tell all my daytime LEO students that the streets only have “perceived” bad guys out there. They should just turn in their sidearms and hand out pixie dust from now on.
There ARE times when an armed man is a citizen and an unarmed man is a victum.
TooManyPuppies, you taught a student to use a gun at 2 AM at her house? What were you doing there? And the gun was attempting to rape her? Wow, that’s one smart gun.
/yawn
An asshole dies, nobody else hurt.
Whats the problem here?
Skippy, I toss out proper punctuation and grammar when I read idiotic comments like the one I was responding to. But, hey if that’s what’s important to you, so be it.
No.53
You seem to toss out everything no matter what you are responding to.
I’m not justifying this action. But it may be correct to say, “Expect to see much more of this in the coming days, weeks, years”. As more of the middle class gets squeezed into the ranks of the unemployed lower class. While the upper class, in positions of authority and privilege, get to keep their jobs and pay scale. Even getting raises, they oversee and approve themselves.
Mark these words. At some point the other 95% of the population are going to ask, seriously, why the top 5% should get such huge salaries, just for signing their names to official document and contracts? It’s not that hard a job to do. And as badly as many do it. It apparently doesn’t take much brains either. Just a whole lot of guile, at pretending to be indispensable. One day the starving multitudes ain’t gonna buy that anymore. And that’s when the masses will come after them. And the executive pay scales will be flattened down to something much more equatable.
#55
Are you a commie?
I love how you all go off in all different directions, some attempt humor, or talk about the lefties and Wingnuts, while others go for gun control. The reality is this guy needed help, and truthfully with the unemployment situation the way it is at the moment, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of this(if it was related to his wife loosing her job.)
Happy Holidays (For those who can afford them)
What on earth is “anti-government paraphanelia”
????????
The guy did a class act job of going out like a bum. If he has kids, they are embarassed and he’ll never live it down.
@ Glenn E.
“At some point the other 95% of the population are going to ask, seriously, why the top 5% should get such huge salaries, just for signing their names to official document and contracts? It’s not that hard a job to do.”
Outsourcing our jobs and moving factories overseas is important business.
Most of the reason the top 5% get large salaries is for being handsome and in good physical condition and socializing well.
Considering how fat and ugly the average American is — in contrast to what you see on television — to have the charisma required to get the job done.
The top 5% won’t let fat or ugly people into their social group.
“Duke’s attorney on the case, Ben Bollinger, remembered Duke as especially paranoid about the new millennium.
“He was one of these Y2k people,” he said, referring to a computer bug that some people thought was going to cause massive problems and economic chaos Jan. 1, 2000. “He was one of those believers that the world was going to turn for worst and he was stockpiling weapons, assault weapons.”
Yeah that’s the sign of a lefty loon. More like the sign of just a loon.
Neither left nor right, just crazy.
Cursor_
This is just great. Another nutball screws it up for the rest of us. Now there is even more ammunition for anyone criticizing the government to be suspect of anti-patriotism. I can just see some schmuck who saw Janet Napolitano’s message at WAL-MART reporting my Facebook page about some otherwise benign comment I might have made against our government. Next thing I know, 2TTH courtesy of the apparently new presidential power that enables an assassination order strictly void of any due-process. Aye de mi, que suete!