A lawyer who represented the park district superintendent who was shot and killed while checking into work earlier this week described on Thursday the former employee named as a suspect in the case as "paranoid."

The attorney, Steven E. Horan of the Porter Scott law firm, had questioned defendant Dupree Pierre Barber in a deposition that was part of the suspect's failed 2009 racial discrimination lawsuit against the Cordova Recreation and Park District and its slain maintenance supervisor, Steve Ebert.

"My impression was that he was paranoid and attributed ordinary events at work to somehow being designed to undercut him in some manner," Horan said.

"He misconstrued innocuous, innocent workplace events to somehow being aimed at causing him distress," the attorney said.

Dupree, 47, made his first court appearance Thursday after his arrest Tuesday in connection with Monday's 6 a.m. shooting death of Ebert, 59. The superintendent was driving to work at the district's headquarters at Hagan Community Park in Rancho Cordova when he was shot and killed.

Officials said Dupree had been laid off along with 17 other park district employees due to budget cuts about two weeks before the shooting. Sheriff's detectives have surmised it was the layoff that prompted the shooting, according to department spokesman Deputy Jason Ramos.

At his arraignment, Barber answered "no" when Sacramento Superior Court Judge Larry Brown asked him if he could afford a lawyer. Brown then appointed Assistant Public Defender John Perkins to represent him.

Prosecutors filed two special-circumstance allegations against Barber that could result in the death penalty if they are found to be true, although the District Attorney's Office has yet to decide whether to pursue capital punishment in the case.

The allegations charge Barber with lying in wait and shooting from one motor vehicle into another.

In his October 2009 lawsuit against the park district, Barber accused Ebert of racial misconduct for not promoting an African American co-worker from a part-time to a full-time position. Barber charged in the suit that all the white employees doing the part-time work had been converted to full time.

Barber also said Ebert "referred to Plaintiff as a 'backstabber' " and that a toy doll with a knife in its back later turned up inserted in the door handle of the murder defendant's work truck.

Ebert once approached him with his fists balled up as if he were ready to fight, Barber charged in his suit.

The action also accused the park district of failing to train Barber and other nonwhite employees in how to apply chemical spray.

The suit says Barber took a 17-day medical stress leave in January 2009.

Cordova park district officials denied the racial discrimination allegations and in September 2010 filed a motion for summary judgment to have the case thrown out. Horan, the attorney with Porter Scott, said the case was then dropped by Barber "with no payment of money."

In exchange for dropping the case, the district agreed to not go after Barber for attorney fees, Horan said. The lawyers who filed the suit on behalf of Barber could not be reached for comment.

At Thursday's arraignment, two Cordova park district employees showed up in court in support of Ebert. One of them told reporters afterward that she was "outraged" by the 6 a.m. events on Monday.

"It's not Mr. Ebert's fault in this in any way," said Kathy Spindola, a landscape supervisor who has worked at the district for eight years.

She said she knew Barber and described him as somebody who "did have a temper."

"We all know that previous to this, there was a lawsuit and that there was nothing factual at all about the lawsuit," Spindola said. "It was dropped. It never should have happened in the first place."

Perkins, the public defender, said the killing was "certainly a tragedy for the Ebert family, and for my client's family, too."

The defense attorney said he has received 10 pages of police reports and had spent only three to five minutes with his client. He described Barber as "very distraught."

Two people who described themselves as friends of Barber also attended the arraignment, but they declined to speak to a reporter.

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