The mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 has claimed another victim, seven years later, with the suicide of a student who initially survived the carnage, his family said.
Donovan Metayer, a senior at the school in Parkland, Fla., managed to escape physically unscathed when gunman and former student Nikolas Cruz, then 19, killed 14 students and three staff members with an assault rifle on Valentine’s Day 2018, and wounded 17 others.
But the youth was never the same again, his family said after he took his own life last week at age 26.
“The trauma of that day and the loss of classmates lingered long after graduation and profoundly altered the course of his life,” his family said in an online funding appeal. “In the months that followed, Donny began to withdraw. Depression, guilt, emotional instability, and long periods of isolation replaced the vibrant young man we once knew.”
Gone was the “radiant child” whose brilliance and curiosity made him an academic standout “with an intellect matched only by a magnetic humor and warmth that could light up any room, effortlessly,” his family said. That was eclipsed by deteriorating mental health, marked by numerous hospitalizations for suicidal ideation, that overcame his dreams of college and a computer science career.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Wilfredo Lee/AP Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
Nancy Metayer Bowen mourned her “baby brother” in a social media post on Saturday, saying he “committed suicide after a seven-year battle with schizophrenia.”
The family will use some of the money raised to establish a fund at Henderson Clinic, where Donovan had most recently been treated, to help people struggling mentally who face barriers to care.
In 2021, Donovan had been blocked from buying a firearm under the state’s Baker Act, which allows for a person to be held temporarily for mental health reasons. But he bought a gun as soon as the order expired, his family said, and “a week later, he would use that same handgun to take his own life in our family home.”
Donovan was the third Parkland survivor to commit suicide. Sydney Aiello killed herself a year after the massacre, at age 19, and days later, 16-year-old sophomore Calvin Desir did the same.
With News Wire Services
