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Joshua Dean was 45, a quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, and one of the first people inside the 737 line to put his name on misdrilled holes in the aft pressure bulkhead. Spirit fired him in 2023. He told the FAA the company’s quality bosses had committed \u00ab\u00a0serious and gross misconduct.\u00a0\u00bb He had a Labor Department whistleblower case pending. In late April 2024 a healthy man went to the hospital with pneumonia, MRSA, and influenza B, then dialysis, intubation, ECMO, a stroke, and talk of amputating gangrenous hands and feet. He died. His lawyers were the same South Carolina pair \u2014 Brian Knowles and Rob Turkewitz \u2014 who represented John Barnett, the Boeing 787 quality manager found dead in a Charleston hotel parking lot in March 2024 during depositions in his own retaliation case.<\/p>\n
Charleston police closed Barnett as a suicide in May 2024. His estate sued Boeing for wrongful death in March 2025, arguing the company \u00ab\u00a0had threatened to break John and break him it did.\u00a0\u00bb Boeing later settled and denied causing his death. On December 8, 2025, Boeing finished buying Spirit’s commercial shops, including 737 fuselage work, and spun the defense side out. That is the supply chain Dean spent his last working years yelling about. No evidence has tied Dean’s infection to a crime. Two safety advocates dying inside two months still did the political work that a press release cannot undo.<\/p>\n