OAN Staff Abril Elfi
2:05 PM – Wednesday, July 30, 2025
A man has been charged after setting a City Councilman on fire in Virginia.
On Wednesday, 29-year-old Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes was arrested for setting Danville City Councilman J. Lee Vogler on fire. Vogler is currently being treated in a hospital.
Hayes has since been charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding.
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According to the Danville Police Department, Hayes allegedly barged into Showcase Magazine, a local monthly publication, and dumped a five-gallon bucket of gasoline on Vogler around 11:30 a.m.
The statement said that the councilman managed to escape the office and ran to the front of the building, but Hayes followed him and set him on fire.
“Lee is awake and talking, and is en route to the burns center in Lynchburg,” Showcase Magazine publisher Andrew Brooks said through tears in a video published on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon.
“Our hearts and prayers are with him,” he went on. “We don’t really know what to say.”
Vogler was airlifted to a burn center where he remains in critical condition.
Authorities said Vogler and Hayes knew each other, but the attack was motivated by personal reasons unrelated to the councilman’s official position or political affiliation.
Vogler was first elected to the Danville City Council in May 2012, making him the youngest person ever elected to that office at the age of 24, according to his biography.
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