Crime Time

Gunman's school board takeover, suicide caught on live broadcast

NBC News aired an intense report Wednesday morning during the Today show on the tragic events that occurred Tuesday at the school board meeting in Panama City, Fla.

An armed man, apparently upset by his wife's firing, pulled a gun on school board members and, after letting some people leave, terrorized the remaining officials with his handgun. One female board member actually tried to disarm him with her purse, but to no avail.

Finally, the man fired shots after the pleadings of board members failed, and a school security official fired upon him. Police said the man then fatally shot himself. And worse, the entire episode was broadcast live to viewers who regularly watched the board's meetings.

No school officials were injured.

You can watch NBC's report here.

-- Lance Murray

Pick your hero: Suicide pilot lauded for 'sticking it to the man'; victim's family outraged

Joe Stack, the suicide pilot (right) who crashed his plane into the IRS office in Austin last week, is being hailed in some corners as a hero who struck a courageous blow against the tyranny of the U.S. tax code.

The way anti-government extremists see it, "he did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man," said JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who is writing a book about tax protesters. "He stuck it to the man, and they love that."

Larken Rose, a 41-year-old Pennsylvania man who served a year in prison for willful failure to file an income tax return, said he does not consider the IRS employee killed in the attack to be an innocent victim.

"I don't know how many people they harassed or how many houses they had stolen or how many bank accounts they had swiped," he told The Associated Press. Stack's 3,000-word anti-tax manifesto "shows quite obviously he was not crazy. He was frustrated. He had been wronged over and over."

The family of Vernon Hunter (left), the longtime IRS employee and father of six who was killed in the suicide attack, rejected any suggestion Stack was a hero.

"People say (Stack) is a patriot. What's he a patriot for? He hasn't served the country," said Hunter's son, Ken Hunter. "My dad did two tours of Vietnam and this guy is going to be a patriot and no one is going to say that about my dad?"

Read the entire AP article here.

-- Bill Miller