The guilty plea closed the main court case weeks after three victims were found across a Westside neighborhood.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Austin Fisher was sentenced to four life terms after pleading guilty in a Westside triple stabbing that killed Edwin Barber, Savannah Barber and Shad Cole after an early morning attack on Exodus Way.
The sentence brought a fast legal end to a case that began with a 911 call about a man at a neighbor’s door. Fisher, 30, admitted guilt to three counts of second-degree murder and one count of armed robbery. The plea avoided a trial and left relatives to bury two of the victims days after the court hearing. Authorities said the three victims were found at different spots in the Normandy Estates area after police traced the attack through the neighborhood.
The legal record now carries the clearest final action in the case: three life sentences for the killings and another life sentence for armed robbery. Fisher will serve the terms in Florida State Prison. The outcome came less than a month after the May 28 deaths, a rapid turn for a homicide case involving three victims, multiple locations and a SWAT arrest. Prosecutors did not have to present the full evidence to a jury because Fisher entered guilty pleas. The plea also ended any dispute in open court over whether he committed the crimes charged by police.
The violence first reached police through a neighbor, not through a call from inside the home where investigators say the stabbings began. Around 3 a.m., a resident contacted the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and reported that a man was knocking on the front door. Officers arrived and found Edwin Barber, 49, on the porch with a stab wound to his chest. Police later said Barber had been stabbed at his home down the street and had made it to the neighbor’s house while seeking help. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died.
That discovery led officers back to Barber’s house. Inside, they found Savannah Barber, 27, in a bedroom with multiple stab wounds. Officers then canvassed the neighborhood and found Shad Cole, 37, on another porch with multiple stab wounds. Savannah Barber and Cole were pronounced dead before they could receive medical care. The sheriff’s office identified the three victims and announced Fisher’s arrest the next day. Family members said Savannah Barber was Edwin Barber’s stepdaughter and that Cole was her fiancé, making the attack a family tragedy as well as a criminal case.
After the stabbings, police said help from community members pointed investigators to Fisher. He was found at a motel in the Normandy Village area. The sheriff’s office said its Community Problem Response Unit and SWAT Team went there to arrest him, but Fisher refused to exit. The standoff lasted several hours before officers took him into custody. His arrest turned the search from an active neighborhood threat into a court case, with Fisher booked on murder and armed robbery counts. A judge ordered him held without bond when he first appeared in court.
Family members filled in parts of the relationship between the people involved. Amy Barber, Savannah Barber’s mother and Edwin Barber’s wife, said Fisher had lived in a shed behind her husband’s property. She said she had been told the original argument was about $600 that was supposedly missing. “I just don’t understand it,” she told a local television station while mourning the victims. Authorities did not publicly list a motive in their early statements, and the guilty plea meant many details that might have been aired at trial did not have to be tested in front of a jury.
Amy Barber also said she believed Fisher returned to attack Savannah Barber because he did not want witnesses left. Her account gave the case its most chilling allegation, but police statements released early in the case stayed focused on the locations, injuries, arrest and charges. The official record confirmed the victims’ names, their ages, the discovery of each person and Fisher’s charges. It did not provide a public minute-by-minute version of what happened before Edwin Barber ran from his house or how Cole ended up on the porch of another home.
Outside the court record, the case left a wider trail in the neighborhood. A Jacksonville family said a stranger came to them after the killings and they helped arrange an Uber ride, only later learning the man was accused of killing three people nearby. One man said he thought the person had cut someone and had no idea what police would soon announce. The account added another layer to the movements after the stabbings, but it did not replace the official sequence described by the sheriff’s office: a 911 call, three victims, a motel standoff and an arrest.
The sentencing did not stop the grief. On Saturday, relatives gathered at Franklin Street Baptist Church for a funeral service for Savannah Barber and Edwin Barber. People wore shirts with images of the three victims and the words “Forever in our hearts. Three lives taken too soon.” Amy Barber said the service felt like living through the loss again. “Now today’s like I’m doing it all over again,” she said. The service came after Fisher had already received his life sentences, leaving the family with a legal answer but not relief from the deaths.
The case stands as closed in the trial court after Fisher’s guilty pleas and sentencing. The public facts now show a short but severe timeline: a May 28 attack, an arrest after a standoff, a first appearance without bond, a guilty plea and four life sentences before the end of June.
Author note: Last updated June 29, 2026.