Spring Lake man sentenced in 2018 death of man left paralyzed by a 1993 assault

A convicted murderer in a 2009 Fayetteville slaying pleaded to another murder recently in which the victim died in 2018 of complications from a 1993 beating that left him quadriplegic.

Howard Leander Barnett, 56, who already served a prison term for the assault of Emanuel Lee Northe Jr., 61, pleaded no contest Aug. 7 to second-degree murder for Northe's death 25 years later. Barnett was sentenced to 15 years in prison to run concurrently with an unrelated murder conviction which expires in September 2030. He was given credit for the more than 8 years he served for the assault conviction.

A charge of first-degree murder is still pending against Barnett's codefendant, Reggie Javan Pickett, 48, court records show.

Northe, an Army veteran and father of two, died Sept. 8, 2018, from pneumonia brought on by the injuries he sustained three decades ago, the autopsy report concluded.

Related: How a 1993 Fayetteville assault led to 2023 murder charges

The report notes that Northe was paralyzed in the assault, resulting in a history of seizure disorder. Required tracheotomy and feeding tubes, also a result of the quadriplegia, led to “multiple infections,” the autopsy states. Northe first developed pneumonia in June 2018, leading to hospitalization on June 25, 2018, and never recovered, according to the autopsy.

'This was my first time ever seeing him in person'

Inside the courtroom during the Aug. 7 plea hearing, Emon Northe, 31, said she was able to tell the court and Barnett for the first time what effect the assault of her father had on her.

"This was my first time ever seeing him in person and I did break down when I saw him. He stared at me the whole time, basically. He kept making eye contact with me and I would hold eye contact with him and force him to break that eye contact," Northe said by phone Wednesday from her home in Virginia. "When I called him a coward, I saw him move like he was (angry) about that."

She said Barnett showed no remorse.

"The whole time he was just looking, like, annoyed and like it was bothering him to be there and there was one point where he fell asleep," she said.

Northe said her father's attack affected her childhood and the relationship she was able to have with him and said he was unable to communicate with her throughout her life, she said.

"I don’t have a recollection of my dad’s voice because I was five months when the assault took place," she said. "I’ll never have the daddy-daughter relationship that I was supposed to have because of Barnett and Pickett.”

With such a light sentence for a man responsible for her dad's death, North said, she worries that she could potentially see her father's killer on the streets if she comes to the city.

"In the back of my mind, I’m always going to be anxious and I’m always going to be concerned about if me and my future kids will run into the man that murdered their grandfather,” she said.

The assault

An arrest warrant states that on July 24, 1993, the men beat Northe, then 36, with a chunk of asphalt and a plastic garbage can in a mobile home park on Sleepy Hollow Drive off Murchison Road.

Both Barnett and Pickett were convicted of the assault. Barnett was sentenced to 15 years in prison on March 7, 1994, and was released from prison in 1999. Pickett was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison on May 9, 1994, according to North Carolina Department of Adult Correction records. He was released in 1997.

Barnett was served with the Northe murder warrant in June 2023, about 12 years into a 21-year prison sentence for the second-degree murder of Tyronne Broaddus, 50, on Oct. 31, 2009, according to court records.

Pickett was also served with the murder warrant in prison. At the time he is serving nearly eight years in prison for convictions in 2021 of possession of a firearm by a felon, assault with a deadly weapon, felonious restraint and being a habitual felon, according to correction records. That sentence will end on June 2025.

Public safety reporter Joseph Pierre can be reached at jpierre@gannett.com .

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Spring Lake man sentenced in 2018 death of man left paralyzed by a 1993 assault