Boeing workers warn that whistleblower John Barnett “made powerful enemies” before his alleged suicide, as a puzzling discrepancy on his police report has emerged.
The whistleblower was found dead in his pickup truck in a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel parking lot on March 9, the same morning he was due to conclude private testimony in a lawsuit against the jet company where he had worked for most of his career.
Courtesy of the Barnett Family
According to a report by Charleston police, he had extended his stay at the Holiday Inn until March 8 and was caught on surveillance video leaving the hotel that morning.
However, staff at the Holiday Inn told The Post he ate dinner in the hotel’s restaurant that night.
The police report also noted Barnett’s driver’s license was still in his room when he was found with a gunshot wound to the head and a pistol in his hand the following morning.
The alarm had been raised by Barnett’s lawyers when they couldn’t reach him on the phone and requested a welfare check.
A hotel staff member found Barnett’s body in the truck while responding to the welfare check request and alerted police, who found him still clutching a pistol and with a gunshot wound to his head.
AP
An investigation into his death is ongoing.
Employees at the local Boeing plant where Barnett had worked until retiring in 2017 say the whole community is shaken up.
One employee, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, said workers were skeptical about the cause of Barnett’s death, which has been preliminarily labeled a suicide.
“It actually gives me a pit in my stomach because of what he’s been saying, and he’s dead now. Maybe he killed himself,” the source said.
“I don’t know what to believe. We don’t really talk about it on the (assembly) line. We’re on camera from the minute we get on the property. They can hear us. So no one wants to talk about it at work.
“A lot of people are skeptical, because he made some pretty powerful enemies.”
Another Boeing employee who spoke to The Post said: “Nothing surprises me when it comes to Boeing. It’s a good job but you’ve got to stay in line. If you don’t, you won’t work there anymore.”
Boeing did not directly address the claims but told The Post in a statement: “We are saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
Police have not indicated that Boeing is under investigation or suspected of any foul play.
Meanwhile, an employee who works at the Holiday Inn where Barnett was found dead in the parking lot told The Post Barnett ate a quesadilla, drank a Coke, scrolled on his phone and seemed fine on the evening of March 8.
“I didn’t think of him at all until I heard the news the next day. He didn’t seem upset at all,” the employee said.
via REUTERS
Barnett was a quality control engineer who worked for Boeing for more than three decades before he retired in 2017.
Two years later, he told the BBC that Boeing cut corners by rushing to get its 787 Dreamliner jets off the production line and into service.
He gave numerous interviews describing how he had complained internally to the company about what he claimed were serious safety flaws he had detected.
Barnett said the company had not taken action, spurring him to go public, out of concern for people’s safety.
His lawyers are challenging the notion that he committed suicide and are calling for a thorough investigation.
“We need more information about what happened to John,” attorneys Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles said in a statement Tuesday.