A longtime Boeing employee and whistleblower, John Barnett, has reportedly been found dead from what Charleston, South Carolina authorities say is a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Barnett, who was 62 years old, worked at Boeing for 32 years before retiring in 2017. He had been part of a lawsuit against the company and was scheduled to answer questions on Saturday about it — after he didn’t show up, he was found dead at a hotel. 

The death comes as the aerospace giant is under a criminal investigation and faces a class action lawsuit after a panel blew off one of its planes in January, forcing an emergency landing.

In January, top executives of airline companies, including Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, said they were “angry” about safety and production issues at Boeing, including loose bolts and shipment delays, as the New York Times reported. 

For years, Barnett, who had worked as a quality control engineer at Boeing’s Charleston plant, had raised concerns about the company. He told the BBC in 2019 that up to 25 percent of oxygen systems could be faulty and leave passengers unable to breathe in an emergency. Barnett said the production process was rushed, and bad parts pulled from scrap bins were purposely put on planes by employees facing strict time crunches. Boeing insisted at the time that its production process followed the strictest safety standards. 

His 2019 allegations came as Boeing was under pressure resulting from two deadly crashes of its 737 Max planes in Indonesia and Ethiopia — for which Boeing was charged with fraud and agreed to pay $2.5 billion in criminal penalties, compensation payments, and a fund for the families of the 346 passengers who died in the crashes. Upon learning of Barnett’s death, the BBC reports, Boeing said it was “saddened” by his passing and that their “thoughts are with his family and friends.”