Sharon Joann Barnes, a 48-year-old female, was a dedicated law enforcement officer serving as the Chief Deputy Sheriff for the Dent County Sheriff’s Department in Missouri. On the afternoon of December 9, 2002, she and Sheriff Bob Wofford responded to a residence on County Road 231, west of Salem. They were investigating a double homicide that had occurred earlier that morning involving a dispute over a lawn mower and methamphetamine. The bodies of Harriet Smith and Michael Wells had been discovered at another location, leading authorities to identify a suspect who had fled the scene with a lockbox filled with drugs.
Upon arriving at the suspect's mobile home to question him, the officers approached the front door. The suspect's girlfriend opened the door, but as Barnes inquired about the man's whereabouts, Earl Mitchell Forrest emerged and opened fire with a. 22-caliber handgun. Barnes was struck in the head and torso during the ambush. Sheriff Wofford was also wounded in the ensuing exchange of gunfire, during which the suspect was shot in the face but survived.
Barnes was airlifted to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis for critical treatment, but she succumbed to her injuries the following morning, December 10, 2002. Earl Forrest was arrested and subsequently charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Barnes, Smith, and Wells. He was convicted and sentenced to death for each of the three murders. After exhausting his appeals, Forrest was executed by lethal injection at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, on May 11, 2016.
