Wounded officer had sought a 'Simpler Life' patrolling schools

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May 21, 2018 2:28 PM

SANTA FE, Texas — In his 23-year career on the Houston police force, patrolling rough neighborhoods and working investigations, Officer John Barnes never had to fire his gun in a confrontation, his stepfather said.

But on Friday, four months into his new job on the force that serves the Santa Fe Independent School District, gunshots erupted in the hallways and classrooms of the high school where Barnes was working.

He and the force’s assistant chief ran toward the noise, and as Barnes confronted the 17-year-old gunman, he took a shotgun blast to his right arm. His gun was out and his arm was extended, family members said, but it was not clear whether he had fired.

As he lay bleeding on the floor of the school, Barnes urged the other officer to leave him behind and see to the students, according to his stepfather, Ronald Hatchett. The other officer later returned and tied a tourniquet around Barnes’ arm.

“It was entirely within his character to do what he did,” Hatchett said of his stepson in an interview Sunday. “He was first through the door. He suffered for being first through the door.”

Of the 13 people wounded in the deadly shooting Friday, Barnes, 49, may now face the most tenuous path. He was still in critical condition Sunday at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and he was being heavily sedated, Hatchett said.

Barnes lost huge amounts of blood after the shotgun blast shredded his right elbow. His heart stopped twice, Hatchett said — once while he was being evacuated by helicopter to the hospital, and again on the operating table. His kidney function was still “in peril,” and doctors do not yet know how his arm will be affected, Hatchett said.

Among his assignments on the Houston force were investigations of sex crimes, family and friends said. He retired from the force in January and began working in the Santa Fe schools, where his wife, Ashley, is an assistant principal at Roy J. Wollam Elementary.

He told a friend, Capt. Jim Dale of the Houston Police Department, that he was seeking a “simpler life,” one in which he would work closer to home and have summers free with his wife, 10-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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