A Boeing whistleblower who voiced concerns about quality was discovered dead.

When John Barnett reported issues he observed at Boeing's South Carolina-based 787 plant, the aircraft maker was allegedly retaliating against Barr.

Local authorities said that a well-known Boeing whistleblower, a former quality manager who voiced concerns about production procedures at the company's 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina, was discovered dead on Saturday from what looked to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

John Barnett, the whistleblower, was in Charleston for a deposition related to a lawsuit he filed alleging Boeing was taking revenge on him for his complaints over safety and quality.

Boeing has long been plagued by issues with both design and production quality. These issues were brought to light most recently by the two Boeing 737 Max crashes that occurred in 2018 and 2019, as well as more recently by the fuselage panel blowing out on a Max aircraft shortly after takeoff two months ago.

In 2017, Mr. Barnett brought a complaint against Boeing to the U.S. Labor Department under the AIR21 Whistleblower Protection Program. This program shields workers of aircraft manufacturers who disclose information about safety violations by air carriers. That year, he quit from the company.

Mr. Barnett was deposed by Boeing's attorney on Thursday, then on Friday, he spent the better part of the day being questioned by his own attorneys. The deposition was supposed to be finished on Saturday morning, according to Robert Turkewitz, the attorney representing Mr. Barnett in the legal dispute.

Concerned, Mr. Turkewitz said he called Mr. Barnett's hotel on Saturday morning when the 62-year-old failed to show up and did not return calls. Then, someone discovered Mr. Barnett dead in the hotel parking lot, inside his pickup truck.

The death was confirmed by the Charleston County Coroner's office, which stated that the cause of death seemed to be "a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

In a statement, the Charleston Police Department stated that it was looking into the coroner's findings. In addition to awaiting the official cause of death and any more information that could provide more insight into the events surrounding Mr. Barnett's death, the department stated that detectives were "actively investigating this case."

Mr. Turkewitz claimed that Mr. Barnett's time at Boeing had had a significant impact on him.

"Reliving all these things that had happened and the stress it had caused was really weighing on him," Mr. Turkewitz stated.

The Labor Department's administrative law judge was hearing the whistleblower case, which was in discovery. A June trial date had been established.

On behalf of Mr. Barnett's family, Mr. Turkewitz declared that he intended to pursue Mr. Barnett's case. John stated, "At the very least, he wanted it to make a difference."

"We are saddened by Mr. Barnett's passing, and our thoughts are with his family and friends," Boeing said in a statement.

Due to his Louisianan ancestry, Mr. Barnett—also known as Swampy—was employed by Boeing for almost thirty years before retiring in 2017. Before relocating to a new plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, in 2010 to work on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner—a wide-body jet that was the company's most significant new aircraft in a generation—he had been employed at Boeing's Everett, Washington, facility.

Mr. Barnett expressed worries about quality difficulties at Boeing, and the company's manufacturing processes were widely reported in The New York Times and other news sites following the crashes of two of its 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019.

In 2019, Mr. Barnett revealed to The Times that he had found titanium slivers hanging over several planes' flight control wires in clusters. When fasteners were inserted into nuts, those slivers were created.

In interviews, Mr. Barnett claimed that despite his repeated requests, his supervisors had refused to take out the slivers and had instead transferred him to a different area of the factory.

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