On a Friday afternoon, December 9, 2011, in Atchison, Kansas, a long-serving police sergeant's life was abruptly and senselessly ended. David Ernest Enzbrenner, a 46-year-old White / Caucasian male, was a 24-year veteran of the Atchison Police Department. He was known in his community not just as a law enforcement officer, but as a dedicated family man with a wife and three daughters.
On that fateful day, Sergeant Enzbrenner was assisting a city code enforcement officer with serving a nuisance order at a residence near the intersection of 12th and Division Streets. The call was routine, one of countless similar duties he had performed over his long career.
As the officers were finishing their work shortly after 4:00 p.m., a 25-year-old man named Skyler Barbee appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Barbee was not connected to the home or the nuisance order. In an unprovoked and sudden attack, Barbee approached Sergeant Enzbrenner and shot him in the back of the head without any warning. After fatally wounding the officer, Barbee then turned the gun on himself, committing suicide at the scene. Sergeant Enzbrenner was rushed to a local hospital, but his injuries were too severe, and he was pronounced dead.
The investigation that followed revealed no direct connection between Barbee and Sergeant Enzbrenner. Authorities concluded that Barbee harbored a grudge against the justice system and law enforcement in general. This animosity was believed to stem from his father serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Louisiana. Barbee himself had a minor criminal record, including a recent conviction for battery on a law enforcement officer, for which he had served 45 days in jail. Because the sole suspect took his own life at the scene of the crime, no arrests were made in connection with Sergeant Enzbrenner's murder. The investigation concluded that Barbee acted alone, leaving a community to mourn the loss of a respected officer and a motive that could never be fully understood beyond a tragic, random act of violence against a uniformed symbol of the authority he resented.
