Man convicted of fatally stabbing friend
A broken bong started a 2015 argument between two West Side friends, one of whom texted a threatening message to the other.
The text, sent by Nicholas Kean to John Barnett, ended with the words, “this switchblade goin thru your kidney.”
About 45 minutes later that afternoon on Dec 23, 2015, Kean kept his word and used a switchblade to stab Barnett in the chest during an altercation at the intersection of Briggs Road and Binns Boulevard.
Despite emergency surgery to repair injuries to his heart and left lung, Barnett died three days later.
Kean, 21, told a Franklin County jury this week that he was acting in self-defense when he pulled his knife, fearing that Barnett, 21, was carrying a gun. Barnett was unarmed.
It took the jury about four hours of deliberations on Friday to reject Kean’s defense and convict him of one count of murder.
The offense carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 15 years, which Common Pleas Judge David Young will impose on May 30.
“It’s wrong to bring a switchblade to a fistfight, and that’s what this man did,” Assistant Prosecutor Scott Kirschman told the jury in his closing argument, pointing at Kean.
Barnett and Kean had been friends for about six years, but trouble began when Kean broke one of Barnett’s bongs, which are water pipes typically used for smoking marijuana. Kean testified that he promised to pay for the bong, but Barnett also accused him of stealing money from him.
On the day of the stabbing, Barnett had posted a remark on Facebook that Kean thought was a reference to their dispute. The tension escalated with a phone call, during which Kean said Barnett threatened to shoot him. Kean testified that Barnett once showed him a gun.
Assistant Prosecutors Kirschman and Joseph Gibson submitted three inflammatory texts that Kean sent to Barnett in the hour before the stabbing, including the switchblade threat.
Kean testified that he sent the switchblade text because “I thought if I threatened him, he might back off.”
The fatal encounter occurred at about 3:30 p.m., as the two drove separate vehicles into the intersection. Two friends who were in Barnett’s car testified that both men got out of their vehicles in the intersection and were throwing punches when Kean pulled a knife and stabbed Barnett.
Kean testified that he was still behind the wheel of his moving car when Barnett opened the driver’s door and yanked him from the vehicle by pulling his hoodie over his head.
Unable to see and worried that he could be shot, Kean said he pulled his knife and “took two aimless swipes at where I thought he was.”
After the stabbing, he fled in his Jeep. He testified that he abandoned the Jeep in an unknown alley and tossed the knife in a trash can in another alley.
Defense attorney Timothy Dougherty said in closing arguments that it didn’t matter that Barnett was unarmed.
“Nick knew that just because he didn’t see a gun sure didn’t mean it wasn’t there,” he said.
Kirschman argued that Kean failed to establish that he had “a reasonable and honest belief that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm.”
The force used by Kean, he said, was “grossly disproportionate” to the threat posed by Barnett.