By Marty Trese, KnoxPages.com Editor
MOUNT VERNON – After the news came Sunday that former Knox County Sheriff David Barber, 63, had been found deceased in his Kinney Road home, those who knew him expressed shock and admiration.
Retired KCSO Sgt. Karen Bennett Butler knew Barber for decades. She told KnoxPages.com that Barber was a very private person and took pride in his work. Sunday evening Butler said, “His sudden death has shaken many of us that worked with Dave, before and then after he became Sheriff, and we are all still trying to wrap our minds around the events of today.”
Former KnoxPages.com Editor Adam Taylor said that he first met Barber 17 years ago while working for the local newspaper and covered him extensively through the years. He spent many hours talking to him and shared that he last spoke to Barber two weeks ago. Taylor said Barber had experienced post traumatic stress disorder with the Matthew Hoffman case. Hoffman is spending his life in prison for the deaths of three people whose bodies were discovered stuffed in a tree in 2011. Taylor says Barber was troubled and haunted by that case. Barber said he worked through the PTSD with the help of friends. Since retirement Barber had been on the road with the touring rock band Def Leppard. Taylor says Barber’s death is a tremendous loss to the community. Taylor concluded, “Barber wasn’t your stereotypical, old school county sheriff, he was a trailblazer.”
Municipal Court Judge John Thatcher and former county prosecutor said, “There are two things that I admired most [about Barber], number one – how well he took care of the people who worked for him and number two – how well he took care of his mother. And his job was his life. He did a lot to take the sheriff’s office into the modern era. He was responsible for CALEA law enforcement accreditation. It was a long process to achieve that.”
Thatcher also said that it was during Sheriff’s Barber’s time in office that the new jail and sheriff’s office were built on Upper Gilchrist Road. Thatcher relayed a story Barber told about one Christmas in the old sheriff’s office on East Chestnut Street when he (Barber) was sitting at his desk and plaster fell from the ceiling. That was an indicator that a new jail/office was needed.
It was in the 1980’s, when Barber served as KCSO detective, when Knox County really started cracking down on sex abuse cases. Thatcher said the investigations back then depended on old fashioned police work, there was no DNA or some of the forensic tools used today.
County Commissioner Thom Collier said, “Dave served our county well and represented all that was good about the sheriff’s office. He took the identity of his office very seriously. He was a sheriff personified, that was just his life, he served us well.” Collier knew Barber for decades, the two grew up across the street from each other on Hamtramck Street in Mount Vernon.
