“A Parkland Survivor’s Ongoing Battle With Trauma Ends in Tragedy”

In a gut-wrenching twist that proves trauma doesn’t clock out when the headlines fade, Donovan Joshua Leigh Metayer — a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school massacre — has died by suicide at age 26 after an agonizing seven-year battle with schizophrenia, his family revealed.

Donovan escaped the bullets at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School back in February 2018 — but the emotional shrapnel never left him. What started as a bright, promising young man’s life became a long, lonely fight against a mental health monster that simply wouldn’t let him go.

His sister, Nancy Metayer Bowen, broke the heartbreaking news in a Facebook post, sharing that her “baby brother” ended his life on December 15, 2025 after years of treatment, hospitalizations, and hard-won progress that wasn’t enough to quiet the rage in his mind.

Even as Donovan earned an IT certificate, held down a job, and tried to live a life beyond the horror, the silent suffering he carried proved too heavy. There’s a cruel irony here — surviving a massacre only to be undone by the bullet wounds no one sees.

Now, his family is turning grief into purpose: they’ve launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover funeral costs and seed a fund for behavioral health support in Florida — hoping that Donovan’s ending sparks a new beginning for others who are drowning silently.

This isn’t just a sad obituary — it’s a wake-up call: trauma doesn’t heal on its own, and survival doesn’t always mean thriving.