"Absolutely incomprehensible."
Those were the words James Dudley Barker's longtime friend used to describe allegations that Barker used a shovel to attack a Salt Lake City police officer with bone-breaking force before the officer shot Barker to death in a yard just one block from Barker's home.
"James was an incredibly peaceful person," said Summer Osburn, who became friends with Barker 20 years ago while they were students at Brigham Young University.
Several friends and neighbors of Barker, 42, gathered Friday at his home in the Avenues, where Barker had lived for several years and was known as an artistic nature-lover, musician and surfer, who volunteered at community arts events and quit his church basketball team because it was "too violent."
"He was one of [Jack] Kerouac's bright, burning roman candles," Osburn said.
| Courtesy Photo James barker
Barker's girlfriend said she had asked Barker to break up ice that had packed around a bus stop on the shaded north side of their home on Thursday afternoon. He evidently took the snow shovel and began walking through the neighborhood, near I Street and 2nd and 3rd avenues.
A neighbor called 911 about 3:30 p.m. to report a suspicious man was carrying a shovel and knocking on doors to seek work shoveling snow. The caller reportedly noted how little snow was on the ground, although icy patches remained on shaded sidewalks on Friday. The caller also said Barker matched the description of someone who on Wednesday was peering into car windows in the neighborhood, police said.
When the officer approached Barker on the porch of another house, a "verbal altercation" began, police said. Barker allegedly attacked the officer with the shovel, striking his arm and leg before the officer fired several times, police said.
Image from the body camera footage of the confrontation with James Dudley Barker.
The officer, whose name was not released, was taken to a hospital to treat fractures to his arm and foot. The officer was recovering at home on Friday. Police would not discuss how many shots were fired, how many struck Barker or where on his body he was wounded.
Detective Dennis McGowan confirmed the injured officer was equipped with a body camera, and that it was turned on at the time of the attack.
But police said the camera quit working at some point due to the violence of the attack.
The footage, released by police Friday night, shows Barker and the officer talking before Barker begins shouting and suddenly swings the shovel at the officer, which is when the footage ends.
The officer had told Barker that neighbors were suspicious of him. Police also claim Barker matched the description of someone who had been looking into cars the day before.
Richard Grow, who lives in the northwest corner of the Avenues, witnessed the final moments of the struggle between the officer and Barker.
Grow, 66, was driving south on I Street when, as he approached 2nd Avenue, he saw the two men leap off a front porch, one after the other. He said he is not sure if the officer was the first one off the porch or not; he initially thought they were two roommates fighting, and only later realized that one was a policeman.
By the time Grow pulled up, stopping his car about 40 feet from the fight, the two men were wrestling on the ground in front of the house.
"They wrestled on the ground for 10 to 15 seconds," Grow said. Then he saw the officer "reach around his side and pull out his gun and hold it up to the guy's chest and, bam, bam, bam ... Point blank against this man's chest."
Grow got out and asked the officer, who Grow thought looked haggard, if he needed any help.
"He just said 'get out of here,' " Grow said. He obeyed, but filled out a statement at police headquarters a few hours later.
During questioning, one thing the police kept asking him was if he could remember whether the officer or Barker was the first one off the porch. Grow can't.
"I did not know that. I wish I could tell them that," he said.
Grow also never saw a shovel, but added that anything involving the implement may have happened beforehand.
Neighbors said they were baffled that Barker would be considered suspicious by anyone living close by.
"He'd walk around. They'd be out doing the yard work, they'd be out here cooking," said neighbor Ron Lee, standing amid hanging mobiles and bric-a-brac decorating Barker's front porch, along with signs supporting Wasatch Community Gardens and Red Butte Gardens. "He wasn't a recluse at all. Anybody that's here should know who James is."
A search of court records found that Barker had no criminal record apart from a March 2014 guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge for failing to disclose his identity to a police officer. Prosecutors dropped a disorderly conduct charge in the same case.
Friends dismissed the suggestion that Barker would burglarize cars in the very neighborhood where he has lived for nearly a decade.
"This guy is regarded by a huge section of our arts community as a gentleman and one of the kindest people you'd ever meet," said Jonny Jemming, who volunteered alongside Barker at events and festivals. "He is a wonderful, wonderful man."
Kathie Chadbourne, who owns the Avenues Bistro on the same block as Barker's house, was well acquainted with Barker and occasionally provided used cooking oil to power Barker's bio-fuel car.
"I'm so sad," Chadbourne said tearfully, moments after discovering Barker was the subject in Thursday's shooting. "This is a good man. Oh, my God."
Kelly Schrock, who lives at the house where the shooting occurred but wasn't home at the time, said she said she was shocked to learn the man whose body was in her yard Thursday night was a neighbor she has seen many times.
"I've walked past their house hundreds of times," Schrock said of Barker and his girlfriend. "I've never seen them cause any harm or anything. They seem like perfectly nice neighbors."
Barker taught tennis lessons, did odd jobs for hire and worked as a musician, said Osburn and Heidi, Barker's girlfriend, who declined to release her last name.
"He was brilliant," Heidi said. "He was the most gentle, beautiful, non-violent soul. He hated conflict. I've never seen him hurt anyone. He loved people so much."
| Courtesy Photo James barker
Barker suffered some memory problems after a traumatic accident, Heidi said, "but he was doing very well." The possibility that Barker would instigate a fight with a police officer, much less break his bones, is "so far-fetched in my mind, I can't even perceive it," Heidi said.
Osburn recalled Barker's love of dancing and singing, particularly a song Barker made up about "Zoom, who comes from the moon, to deliver this special birthday message," which he sang to her son at his birthday three weeks ago.
"It doesn't make sense to any of us," Osburn said. "What does make sense is the pattern of police brutality. What does make sense is the reaction to minor calls with brutal, lethal force. Even if the officer were threatened with a shovel, why don't our officers know how to disable something like that? Why don't they have the skills taught in any common self-defense course that a woman takes to feel safe in the world?"
Schrock said the shooting was "disconcerting" and "tragic."
"I'm very sorry for James and his family, and also the officer and his family," she said.
The shooting was the first homicide in the state in the new year and one of two shootings by police on Thursday. A man in Syracuse suffered critical injuries when an officer shot him during a domestic violence call on Thursday night.
