Police killed Jordan Barnes, 29, after horrific Piscataway knife attack

And that’s the way it is, this cold January evening. The official word has been stamped and released, and the ink, like the matter, is dry.

The decedent, as they say with a peculiar bureaucratic grace, has been identified as Jordan Barnes, 29, of Piscataway, the civilian who died during the encounter.

A name, an age, a township. The dossier is complete.

According to the preliminary investigation, which is a fine piece of phraseology meaning the story as it stands before it gets lawyered and sanded into an acceptable shape, the police were summoned by a relative.

A threat was reported. The officers arrived at a home on River Road, a name suggesting peace, but there was none. Allegedly, Jordan Barnes brutally murdered three of his family members.

One officer spoke to a door. Another peered through a sidelight, a window beside the door, and saw two bodies lying silent on the floor.

The door opened. There stood Barnes, holding a kitchen knife, that most common and terrible of instruments.

He was commanded to drop it, to fall to the ground. He did not. Three electric bolts were fired into him from tasers.

He continued to walk.

Officer John Ward fired his service weapon. Medical aid was rendered, with punctilious haste. Two knives were recovered. Mr. Barnes was later pronounced deceased.

After the smoke clears and the reports are filed, we learn the fuller horror.

Inside that quiet house on River Road were three more of the deceased: Jeanmarie Barnes, 60, Richard A. Barnes, 86, and Brenda F. Barnes, 84, carried away, the report suggests, by stab wounds.

An entire family, it seems, gone to ruin in an hour.

The local prosecutor will investigate their deaths, while the state investigates his. A neat division of labor.

Now, the law, passed in 2019, requires a grand jury to look into this. It is a fine law, as laws go, promising a transparent and impartial review.

It is the machinery of justice, oiled and gleaming. It will turn, and it will produce a finding. One is comforted to know the process will be followed.

So here we are, friends. A family is erased. A young man is shot dead after being tasered three times.

The authorities have identified him, with admirable thoroughness, as Jordan Barnes, 29, of Piscataway.

They have identified the officer. They have cited the statute. All the boxes are ticked.

The investigation continues, and no further information is available.

The river of officialdom flows on, deep and silent, and we are left on the shore with the cold facts, wondering what dreadful current swept through that house before the police ever arrived, and whether any report, however precise, will ever truly tell the tale.

The rest, as they say, is for the grand jury to decide.