A close friend of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett said he predicted he might end up dead before he was found shot last week.
The 62-year-old was found in his truck in a hotel parking lot in South Carolina, seven years after he retired from a 32-year career at Boeing.
Barnett’s death occurred during a whistleblower case in which he alleged that vacuum workers knowingly assembled substandard aircraft parts on the assembly line.
The close family friend Jennifer has now told WPDE that Barnett had warned her that such a thing was happening to him.
She told the outlet: ‘I said, ‘Aren’t you scared?’ And he said: ‘No, I’m not afraid, but if something happens to me, it’s not suicide.’
The 62-year-old was found in his truck in a hotel parking lot in South Carolina – seven years after he retired from a 32-year career at Boeing
Close family friend Jennifer, seen here, has now told WPDE that Barnett had warned her about something like this happening to him
Jennifer continued: ‘I know he didn’t commit suicide. There is no way. He loved life too much.
‘He loved his family too much. He loved his brothers too much to put them through what they are going through right now.’
Jennifer believes someone ‘didn’t like what he had to say’ and wanted to ‘shut him up’.
She added: ‘That’s why they made it look like a suicide. I don’t care what they say, I know Mitch didn’t do it.’
Barnett had alleged that second-rate parts were literally removed from scrap bins before being fitted to aircraft built to prevent delays.
A 2017 FAA review confirmed some of his concerns, requiring Boeing to intervene.
He had just given a statement to Boeing lawyers for the case last week, said his lawyer Brian Knowles.
The Charleston County coroner, meanwhile, confirmed Monday that the longtime Boeing employee died Friday while in town for interviews related to the case.
Barnett had alleged that second-rate parts were literally removed from scrap bins before being fitted to aircraft built to prevent delays
Boeing’s assembly plant in North Charleston – where the deceased worked for decades – is seen here
Boeing also responded to the former worker’s death in its own statement as news spread, saying it was “saddened by Mr. Barnett’s passing.”
The statement did not address any aspect of the case, but ultimately added: ‘Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.’
Staff at the Holiday Inn where Barnett was found dead revealed he seemed fine the night before his ‘suicide’.
Barnett ate a quesadilla, drank a Coke, scrolled on his phone and seemed fine on the evening of March 8, the unnamed hotel employee told the New York Post.
His lawyer previously questioned the coroner’s conclusions that the gunshot wound was ‘self-inflicted’ and said Barnett was in good spirits between his statements.
A police report obtained by DailyMail.com reveals Barnett extended his stay at the Holiday Inn two days before his suspected suicide and had been set to check out the day before the alarm was raised.
The report describes a friend of Barnett’s contacting the hotel and requesting a welfare check at 10 a.m. on March 9, when employees knocked on the door of his hotel room without an answer.
A staff member then searched his orange Dodge Ram in the hotel parking lot and discovered Barnett dead in the driver’s seat with a ‘silver gun’ in his right hand.
Barnett had his ‘right index finger back on the trigger’ and suffered a ‘gunshot wound near his right temple’, according to the Charleston Police Department.
The report added that there was a “white piece of paper that looked very much like a note” lying on the passenger seat. The contents of the memo have not yet been disclosed.
The factory where Barnett worked for decades is where Boeing builds the 787 Dreamliner, one of several airliner crafts that have made headlines recently.
On Monday, around 50 people were treated by first responders after a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flying from Australia to New Zealand experienced a ‘technical incident’ that caused ‘a strong movement’ to shake passengers in their seats.
The company on Friday told airlines to begin inspecting switches on pilot seats after a report said an inadvertent movement of the cockpit seat caused the plunge.
In a separate incident in early January, an unused emergency exit door blew off a brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Portland International, triggering a still-ongoing DOJ investigation.
On Friday, shortly before the incident over the Indian Ocean, Boeing said it believed the technical fault involving the door stemmed from something that occurred during production, with required documents detailing the removal of a key part that failed never being created .
On Monday, around 50 people were treated by first responders after a Boeing 787 Dreamliner flying from Australia to New Zealand experienced a ‘technical incident’ that caused ‘a strong movement’ to shake passengers in their seats
Meanwhile, in a separate incident in early January, an unused emergency exit door blew off a brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Portland International, triggering a still-ongoing DOJ investigation
LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft that suddenly lost altitude mid-flight, crashed violently and injured dozens of travelers, is seen on the tarmac at Auckland International Airport on March 12, 2024
Also on Friday, the company said it is “committed to continuing to cooperate fully and transparently with the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation,” which more than three months later remains ongoing.
Barnett’s job for 32 years was to oversee production standards for the company’s planes — standards he said were not met during his four years at the then-new Charleston plant from 2010 to 2014.
“The new management didn’t understand processes,” Barnett told Corporate Crime Reporter in a 2019 interview about how brass allegedly cut corners to get their then-state-of-the-art 7878s out on time.
“They brought them in from other areas of the company,” he continued, two years after retiring in 20017.
‘The new management team – from my director down – they all came from St. Louis, Missouri. They said they were all friends there.’
“That whole team came down,” he continued. ‘They were from the military side. My impression was that their mindset was – we’re going to do it the way we want to do it. Their motto at the time was – we’re in Charleston and we can do anything we want.’
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun speaks to reports at the Capitol in January after the MAX 9 plane was grounded following the door incident. The company is now under criminal investigation
‘They started pressuring us not to document failures, to work outside of procedures, to allow defective materials to be installed without being corrected.
‘They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configuration control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non-conforming parts – they would just push the planes out the door and make the cash register ring.
“That whole team came down,” he continued. ‘They were from the military side. My impression was that their mindset was – we’re going to do it the way we want to do it. Their motto at the time was – we’re in Charleston and we can do anything we want.’
He also said he had uncovered serious problems with the plane’s oxygen systems, claiming that one in four breathing masks would not work in the event of an emergency.
Barnett claimed he alerted superiors at the plant of his concerns, but no action was ever taken. Boeing denied this as well as his claims.
However, a 2017 review by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continued to uphold some of Barnett’s concerns, including finding that at least 53 ‘non-conforming’ parts – as they put it – were misplaced and considered lost.