Dead Boeing Whistleblower Said if Something Happens It Was Not Suicide

by

John Barnett, 62, from Louisiana was found dead in his vehicle outside a Charleston hotel on Saturday morning. Barnett, who worked for Boeing for 32 years, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging safety concerns. The United States Department of Labor was working through the discovery phase of its investigation and is set to begin hearings on that complaint this June.

Barnett had just completed two days of deposition on March 7 and March 8. According to his lawyers Rob Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, he was tired but committed to giving his third and final day of testimony. When he did not arrive in court on March 9 and did not answer their phone calls, Barnett’s lawyers called the hotel where he was staying to check on him.

A local ABC news channel reports, a close family friend of John Barnett said he predicted he might wind up dead and that a story could surface that he killed himself.

But at the time, he told her not to believe it.

“I know that he did not commit suicide,” said Jennifer, a friend of Barnett’s. “There’s no way.”

The attorneys of a former Boeing employee who raised concerns about Boeing’s production standards have released a statement as an investigation into his death this weekend continues.

Barnett’s attorneys, Robert Turkewitz of the Law Office of Robert M. Turkewitz, LLC and Brian Knowles of Knowles Law Firm, PC, released the following statement Tuesday afternoon:

John was a brave, honest man of the highest integrity. He cared dearly about his family, his friends, the Boeing company, his Boeing co-workers, and the pilots and people who flew on Boeing aircraft. We have rarely met someone with a more sincere and forthright character.

Officers found the truck in the hotel’s back parking lot, an incident report states. An orange truck was located Tuesday at an impound lot in North Charleston. The woman working the counter said the truck had Louisiana plates and was the subject of a police hold.

Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal said Barnett died Saturday “from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” Police said Barnett had a silver handgun in his right hand with his finger still on the trigger and had suffered an apparent gunshot wound to his right temple.

An employee told police they heard a “pop” sound near the car a less than an hour before police arrived, but the employee said they didn’t think anything of it. Police also noted there was a white piece of paper “resembling a note” on the passenger seat of that car.

He reportedly alerted managers about the company using sub-standard parts and oxygen systems with serious problems on several occasions. Those managers allegedly took no action to fix the issues and Boeing denied Barnett’s claims.

“John was deeply concerned about the safety of the aircraft and flying public, and had identified some serious defects that he felt were not adequately addressed,” Barnett’s brother, Rodney, said in a family statement to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “He said that Boeing had a culture of concealment and was putting profits over safety.”

Rodney Barnett said working at Boeing created stress for John.

“He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing, which we believe led to his death,” the brother said.

22 thoughts on “Dead Boeing Whistleblower Said if Something Happens It Was Not Suicide”

  1. We are still not connecting the dots. We live in a chicken coop we know only what we are allowed to know, which we’re not is meticulously cleaned out one a or the other. That is also true for institutional science. The forces would do that lead us to destruction through ignorance. And they are gaining from that.

  2. EXACTLY! His “finger still on the trigger”, what a RIDICULOUS statement! This was a cold blooded murder to eliminate the witness prior to the DOT Hearings in June!

  3. When Navalny died Putin was blamed, before any forensic evidence was presented. Here we have a whistleblower found shot to death and it’s been ruled a suicide.

  5. I don’t believe for one second that this man killed himself and if it is ruled a suicide the coroner should be investigated for either taking a bribe or was threatened. Corporations are soulless and will not accept any thing that effects their bottom line. They have murdered him and that is a fact and will probably proceed to murder many who continue to fly in their deadly planes. Evil

  6. Whistleblower cases rarely if ever end well for the whistleblowers. These are extremely brave and highly motivated people who may or may not realize the high stakes risk they are taking.

    • Suicide only benefits Boeing, Iam sure Brian, before letting the truth be known, consider what could happen. I don’t think he would have took his own life.He still had work to do. To help make it safer on Boeing aircraft and the right people be held accountable. Now he can’t.Hopefully the truth about his death will be found. Even though Boeing is under investigation his knowledge would have helped tremendously. Iam sure he had more to reveal. May he R.I.P.

  7. There’s no way the shooting hand of someone who just shot himself in the right temple could wind up “resting in his lap.” The recoil of the gun from an instantly dead person would propel his hand as far from the rest of his body as his arm would allow, possibly even damaging his tendons and bones from lack of conscious resistance. Anyone who’s ever fired a gun of any kind knows the force of the recoil & can imagine what it would be in the awkward position of the wrist turned inward towards one’s own head while seated in a car.
    Were there powder burns on the victim’s hand?
    If not, this gun and hand were placed on the victim’s lap by someone else, postmortem.

    • There are plenty of ways a gun can end up in the lap of someone that has shot himself in the head. They aimed slightly up and the force caused downward extension of the elbow joint. Or there was something to the right, such as a lifted up console, that the arm recoiled off of, causing it to go back to the left. Or he had his elbow resting against/bracing against that console.

    • “Were there powder burns on the victim’s hand?”
      …what? You don’t usually get powder burns on your hands. You get gunshot residue (GSR) but good luck distinguishing that from a homicide because that goes everywhere when you discharge a weapon.

  10. The event can be considered somewhat convenient for Boeing and other parties involved, from a TV crime ‘who done it’ drama perspective. While he might have already come forward with some information, he was far from done spilling it all. We’ll never know what else he knew.

      • If those are the cases I think they are:
        The accelerator & brake pedals were placed such that it was far easier to accidentally hit the accelerator when you meant to hit the brake, than in other cars.

Comments are closed.