Savannah Barber, Edwin Barber and Shad Cole were killed in the May 28 attack on the city’s Westside.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Relatives mourned Savannah Barber and Edwin Barber at a church service Saturday, weeks after a triple stabbing in Jacksonville’s Normandy Estates neighborhood also killed Shad Cole and sent Austin Fisher to prison for life.
The funeral at Franklin Street Baptist Church came after the criminal case had already reached its main ending. Fisher, 30, pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and one count of armed robbery. He received four life sentences. For the family, the plea closed the courtroom phase but did not settle the grief from the May 28 attack, which killed a daughter, her stepfather and her fiancé in a single morning.
Loved ones arrived wearing shirts printed with photos of Savannah Barber, Edwin Barber and Cole. The message on the shirts read, “Forever in our hearts. Three lives taken too soon.” Amy Barber, Savannah Barber’s mother and Edwin Barber’s wife, said the service made the loss feel fresh again. “It’s been hard,” she said. “It feels like it’s been going in circles.” She said the funeral felt like doing it all over again and that she was ready for the process to be over. The gathering gave family and friends a place to grieve together after weeks of police updates, court action and public attention.
Savannah Barber was 27. Family members said Edwin Barber, 49, was her stepfather. Cole, 37, was her fiancé. Their names became public after the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest in a stabbing attack centered on Exodus Way. Police said the case began in the early morning, when a resident called 911 to report that a man was knocking on the front door. Officers went to the area and found Edwin Barber on the porch with a stab wound to his chest. He had been stabbed at his home down the street and had run to the neighbor’s house for help, investigators said.
Police then went to Barber’s home and found Savannah Barber inside a bedroom with multiple stab wounds. While officers searched the neighborhood, they found Cole on the porch of another house with multiple stab wounds. Savannah Barber and Cole died before they could receive medical attention, authorities said. Edwin Barber was transported to a hospital and later died. The locations of the three victims shaped the first public account of the case, showing officers moving from a neighbor’s front door to the home where the attack began and then across the surrounding block.
Amy Barber said Fisher had been living in a shed behind her husband’s property. She said she was told the original argument began over $600 that was supposedly missing. She also said she learned Fisher waited until everyone was asleep before stabbing the victims. “She did not deserve this, or my husband, or even Shad, any of them,” Barber said. The sheriff’s office did not announce an official motive in its early statements. Because Fisher later pleaded guilty, many questions about the argument, the order of events and the evidence may not be laid out in the same way they would have been during a trial.
The search for Fisher moved quickly after the victims were found. The sheriff’s office said community residents helped investigators identify him as the suspect. Police learned he was hiding at a motel in the Normandy Village area. Members of the Community Problem Response Unit and the SWAT Team went to the motel, but Fisher refused to come out, the sheriff’s office said. After several hours in a standoff, officers took him into custody. He was booked on three murder counts and an armed robbery count, and he was ordered held without bond after his first appearance.
The case also left people beyond the Barber family shaken. A Jacksonville family said they helped buy an Uber ride for a stranger after the killings, then later learned the person was accused in the triple stabbing a few blocks away. One man said he thought the stranger had cut someone, not that three people were dead. The account reflected how quickly the violence moved from a private home to the wider neighborhood, where residents became part of the timeline before many of them knew what had happened on Exodus Way.
Fisher’s guilty plea came less than a month after the stabbings. He was sentenced to life in prison for each of the three murder counts and received another life sentence on the armed robbery charge. Local reports said he will not be eligible for parole. The sentence spared relatives from a trial but also fixed the public case around the facts already released by police and the family’s statements. The plea confirmed Fisher’s criminal responsibility while leaving the victims’ relatives to carry the personal story of who was lost.
For Amy Barber, that loss joined several family roles in one case. She lost her daughter Savannah, her husband Edwin and the man relatives identified as Savannah’s fiancé. Her public comments focused on pain, disbelief and the claim that the attack may have started over missing money. The funeral service gave the family a public moment away from booking records and charge lists. Still, even the shirts worn by mourners connected the service to the case by carrying all three victims’ images together.
As of Monday, Fisher has been sentenced and the main court case has ended. The victims’ families are left with memorials, burial services and the lasting impact of a May 28 attack that began inside a home and became known when Edwin Barber reached a neighbor’s porch.
Author note: Last updated June 29, 2026.