2017/07/12

myPalmBeachPost July 10, 2017: NEW: 1958 gunshot wound killed man in May but never defined his life

PAHOKEE — John Henry Barrett once described it as the moment that changed his life. And the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner is now calling it the one that contributed his to recent death.

A playful fight with a friend nearly six decades ago in western Palm Beach County escalated into a more serious confrontation — and gunfire. At age 19, Barrett was left partially paralyzed for the remainder of his life when he was shot in the neck in 1958 and a bullet damaged his spinal cord.

The lifelong Pahokee resident died in May at the age of 77. He is counted as one of Palm Beach County’s 63 homicide victims for 2017 after the medical examiner determined last month that he died from an infection and complications related to the gunshot wound from all those years ago.

According to the medical examiner’s report, the person responsible for the shooting was convicted and served time in prison. The report does not identify the shooter, or say how long a sentence that person served.

Court and law enforcement officials said they were unable to find information about the suspect or the shooting in their records.

However, for those who knew him, Barrett’s life was defined not by that fateful day, but in his many accomplishments in the years that followed.

“He always told my brother and myself, no matter how dire your circumstances, your mind has the ability to overcome anything,” Robert Lee, Barrett’s great-nephew, said recently. “His life is an example.”

For more than three decades, Barrett served as pastor for the New Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Pahokee. An outspoken advocate for families in the city’s public-housing communities, Barrett became the first African-American executive director of the Pahokee Housing Authority.

He did not speak often about the shooting, but used his circumstance to inspire others, family members said. more