Max Poff's parents, David and Dianna, sit in Max's untouched bedroom. 16-year-old Max committed suicide, shooting himself in the head with his father's pistol, after his parents say was bullying he received from classmates at Wiliam Byrd High Scool. David Poff says that he still opens the blinds in his room every day, where an American flag hangs on his wall. Max wanted to be a Marine.
According to a Youth Risk Behavior Survey, half of all Roanoke County school kids reported being bullied in 2012 — 12.7 percent of those surveyed said it happened to them daily. The rate for attempted suicide among the high school teens was 11.4 percent, almost double the national average.
And an astonishing one in four reported feeling sad or hopeless every day for more than two weeks at a time — the clinical definition of depressed.
And yet, both school and police officials initially asserted that bullying had nothing to do with Max Poff’s suicide.