Slain Teen Had 2 Sides to His Life, Friends Say

The lifeless body displayed on television screens, barely showing a face obscured by a stocking mask and lying on a motel parking lot, is not the image Brad Eaddy wants people to remember of his friend, Charles Barker.

Barker, 18, was shot to death the night of June 6, when he and a 16-year-old boy donned stocking masks and armed themselves with a .22-caliber pistol in an attempt to rob a Calexico minister at the Motel 6 in Clairemont.

The robbery attempt went awry, with fatal results.

According to a San Diego police report of the incident, the Rev. Richard R. Thompson, a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, feigned a heart attack when confronted by the two youths and slumped to the asphalt.

As the two would-be robbers watched, Thompson, who police say had a permit for a concealed weapon, pulled a .44 Magnum revolver from his waistband and fired once, hitting Barker, who was unarmed, in the chest. Barker, who was also known as Chuck Elliotto his friends, fell to the ground, mortally wounded.

Last Friday, more than two weeks after the incident, San Diego police received a letter from the district attorney’s office clearing Thompson. Homicide Sgt. Frank Martinez said that prosecutors termed the killing justifiable homicide. Thompson, who is a minister at the Calexico Methodist Church, could not be reached for comment. A church employee said he was out of town for the rest of the month.

At first glance, it appears to be a fairly common story of a young dropout who died for a sordid crime.

But his friends--and he had many of them--paint a portrait of a more complex young man than television footage and police reports show.

Barker was a generous, affectionate friend and a good high-school athlete, they say, with a another side, a strange streak that seemed to get him in trouble at times. He was widely admired by other teen-agers, including straight, successful kids, but seemed unable to cope with the world of authority and responsibility, although he had never been in trouble with police before.

His death traumatized other teen-agers in the Clairemont neighborhood where he lived and died; several days after the killing, it was the subject of most conversations at Madison High School, which Barker attended for two years. Barker was a young man to whom friends meant a lot--to the point where it was his friends who identified his body, his friends who mourn the way he died.

“I wish they hadn’t shown that picture, with the stocking over his head,” said Eaddy, 19. “That image is going to stay with his mother forever. It’s unfair. That picture is going to influence what other people who didn’t know Chuck think about him. That wasn’t Chuck, and that picture will never tell people who he really was.”

Although Eaddy and Barker were close friends, the two could not have been more different. Barker’s life appeared to be at a standstill, after he was expelled and later dropped out of high school.

Eaddy, who was a quarterback for the Madison High School football team, was driven by a desire to play in the National Football League and earn a college degree. He is attending the University of New Mexico on a scholarship.

However, Eaddy remained a faithful friend and minimized Barker’s faults and any differences in their lives.

“Don’t make me out to be better than Chuck. You couldn’t find a better friend than Chuck. He helped you out any way he could. Chuck never turned his back on me,” said Eaddy, who is attending summer classes in New Mexico.

Eaddy and another friend, Mike Haas, 20, identified Barker’s body at the county morgue three days after the shooting.

Deputy Coroner Charles Kelley,said Eaddy broke down after identifying Barker’s body. The young man called his mother, crying, “Mom, it’s Chuck.”

A school district official who knew Barker said “he was kicked out of Madison” in the 10th grade for poor grades and excessive truancy, but described him as “quiet and polite.”

“He was a good-looking kid, but clearly not interested in school. He was a poor student. The kids all think the world of Chuck, but the truth is he was a high school dropout and a little robber,” said the school official, who did not want to be identified.

Eaddy sees it differently.

“Chuck never really lost interest in school. But Chuck was different,” he said. “If society said this, Chuck would ask why it had to be like that. His faults were no different from anybody else’s. He was not a mean person.”

After being expelled from Madison, Barker transferred to Twain Junior-Senior High School. A Twain school official said he never graduated.

“A lot of people don’t remember that Chuck was a good athlete when he was at Madison,” Eaddy said. “He was a linebacker on the football team and played second base and shortstop on the baseball team. We always played basketball on weekends and he took the games very seriously.”

Haas, who was also close to Barker, said he was unafraid to display his emotions around other friends.

“He was different. He wasn’t afraid to give a hug to his friends,” Haas said. “That’s the kind of person he was, caring. He never hesitated to show his care and concern for you. I know people wouldn’t believe it by seeing that picture of him on television, but he really was a kind person. People should know this.”

Other teen-agers who knew Barker said they were shocked by Barker’s death, but not surprised. Still, the consensus among Barker’s friends was that he did not deserve what he got.

“Chuck was kind and faithful to his friends,” said one young woman who knew him. “And somehow he had a knack for doing the wrong thing at times. But he didn’t deserve to be shot like that.”

Martinez and several of Barker’s friends said Barker tried the robbery because he wanted to buy a birthday present for his girlfriend, who turned 15 on June 8. Until the ill-fated robbery, Barker had never been in trouble with police, Martinez said.

Barker’s young accomplice, whose name cannot be revealed because of his age, ran into a residential area behind the hotel with gun in hand. Originally, the youth was booked on a murder charge. Under California law, an accomplice in a crime can be charged with murder if his partner is killed while committing the crime.

But Martinez told The Times the murder charge will probably be dropped. Instead, Martinez said the district attorney’s office will probably charge him with robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.

According to friends of Barker and the unidentified teen, the youngster did not tell anyone about the incident for three days until he was arrested by San Diego police on June 10.

Meanwhile, Barker, who was not carrying any identification, was listed as a John Doe at the morgue.

On Friday night, June 8, two days after Barker’s death and on the day he planned to give his girlfriend a birthday gift, his 16-year-old accomplice attended a party with Eaddy, Haas and other friends of Barker.

“We saw him at a party Friday night,” Eaddy said. “He didn’t say a word about it (the shooting) to anybody. He looked like he was having a good time.”

Haas said that Barker’s brother, John, and friends began to worry about the missing man on Saturday.

Although his family had recently moved to Rancho Penasquitos, Barker chose to hang around Clairemont with old friends, said Haas.

“Chuck didn’t like to stay home. He liked to be with his friends,” said Haas. “But on Saturday, we were at a friend’s house and another friend called to say that nobody had seen Chuck. Not even his girlfriend.”

According to Haas, another friend had read a newspaper story about the attempted robbery at the Motel 6 and “people started putting two and two together.”

“Everything seemed to point to the possibility that Chuck may have been the one killed in the robbery,” Haas said.

John Barker, 20, who is Barker’s older brother, was “real upset” about his brother’s disappearance, said Haas.

“There are very few brothers I’ve seen who are as close as John and Chuck,” said Haas. “They were best friends and did everything together. It was hard to picture them as brothers because they were such close friends, too.”

At some point on Saturday, the friends learned from police about the unidentified body that had lain at the morgue, less than three miles from where the shooting occurred, for three days.

“John said he couldn’t go down there. So Brad and I went,” said Haas.

Deputy Coroner Kelley said the two young men arrived at the morgue at about 10:30 p.m., Saturday, June 9, and identified the body.

“They were both very shook up by it. I thought (Eaddy) was going to faint. You could tell they took it real hard,” Kelley said.

Events began to unfold rapidly after police were notified late Saturday night that Barker’s body had been identified.

On Sunday morning, June 10, the 16-year-old suspect and a .22-caliber handgun were turned in to police by his mother, police said.

“The young man has no prior record and his mother turned him in. These things helped him,” Martinez said. “Gosh, I hope he’s learned a lesson from this. It’s a shame that he had to learn it like this and by seeing his friend die.”

Exactly one week after Barker’s death, law enforcement authorities allowed the teen-ager to attend the funeral, while handcuffed and accompanied by a probation officer. Friends say the young man cried throughout the service and appeared to be in shock.

Eaddy did not have an opportunity to grieve with friends over Barker’s death. Less than eight hours after identifying Barker’s body, Eaddy returned to New Mexico for summer football camp and school.

“I almost had a heart attack when I saw him at the morgue,” Eaddy said. “I’ll remember that for the rest of my life. I had never seen a dead person before, and I never thought the first one I’d see would be my friend.”