A former Boeing manager who raised safety questions about the aircraft maker and was found dead after several days of depositions in South Carolina took his own life, police said on Friday after concluding their investigation. John Barnett, 62, of Louisiana, was found dead on March 9, and police had said earlier that his injuries were self-inflicted. Barnett was a longtime Boeing employee and worked as a quality-control manager before he retired in 2017. In the years after that, he shared his concerns with journalists.<\/p>\n
Barnett said he saw discarded metal shavings near the wiring for the flight controls that could have cut the wiring and caused a catastrophe. He also noted problems with up to a quarter of the oxygen systems on Boeing\u2019s 787 planes. \u201cInformation and records reviewed during the investigation uncovered Mr Barnett\u2019s longstanding mental health challenges, which had intensified in connection with ongoing legal proceedings related to his whistleblower case,\u201d police said in a statement. Barnett was in Charleston answering questions for depositions for his whistleblower complaint, and a hearing on the matter was scheduled for June.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn 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,\u201d Barnett\u2019s brother, Rodney, said in a family statement shortly after his death. \u201cHe said that Boeing had a culture of concealment and was putting profits over safety.\u201d Boeing said in a statement, \u201cWe are saddened by Mr Barnett\u2019s passing, and our thoughts continue to be with his family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Boeing manager who raised safety questions about the aircraft maker and was found dead after several days of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":44616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7348,14032,792,8643,4817],"class_list":["post-44615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-deaths-of-whistleblowers","tag-investigation","tag-safety-concerns","tag-violations"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}