Caleb Barber was 31 when a Knox County deputy shot and killed him in a gas station parking lot on Sunday morning. It happened at the Weigel’s at 7505 Clinton Highway in Powell, Tennessee, on Oct. 25.
It started with phone calls. Shortly before 7:30 a.m., people dialed 911 and said a man with a gun was in the lot. They said he was acting erratically. Deputies with the Knox County Sheriff’s Office headed over.
One deputy walked up and made contact with Barber. That’s about all the public has been told about those moments. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says things got worse for reasons it’s still looking into. Then the deputy fired, and the shots hit Barber.
Barber was pronounced dead at the scene. No deputies were hurt.
The sheriff’s office spoke first. It said deputies had shot a person who was “acting erratically,” and it gave no name. The TBI later said the man who died was Barber. Around 8:15 a.m., the sheriff’s office also asked people to stay away from the area because of the heavy police presence.
On Monday, the sheriff’s office named the deputy as Riley Duncan. He joined the department in May 2025 and works in the Patrol Division. He’s on paid administrative leave, which the office says is standard after a shooting.
The TBI is running the investigation because 6th Judicial District Attorney General Charme Allen asked it to. Agents are collecting evidence and talking to people to piece together what happened. They’ll pass what they find to Allen. The TBI doesn’t decide whether the deputy was right to fire. Allen does.
The TBI hasn’t said what led to the shots. What Barber and the deputy said to each other, and what Barber was doing in those last seconds, hasn’t been made public. Our thoughts are with Barber’s family.
Leave a Reply