Teenager's tough act may have had role in shooting

Associated Press

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A LIFE CUT SHORT: Ryan McDonald's life came to an abrupt end Thursday when he was fatally shot by classmate Jamar Siler in the cafeteria of Knoxville Central High School. Friends and family say the 15-year-old's intimidating manner was just an act that hid a truly generous and funny teenager.

A clergyman said he thinks the victim, who was being bullied, simply ‘stood his ground’ and that led to his death.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tough-talking Ryan McDonald grew up in a rough blue-collar neighborhood, teased as “Mr. Clean” since childhood after an ailment left him permanently bald.

But friends and family say the intimidating manner he used to fend off insults hid a generous and funny teenager eager one day to work with troubled children. His life abruptly ended Thursday morning when a classmate shot him to death in the cafeteria of Central High School here.

“He was a kindhearted kid, you know? I just loved him, you know what I’m saying? He would do anything for you if you asked him,” 18-year-old Ron Rochester, known in the Lonsdale neighborhood as “Ron Ron,” said of his 15-year-old best friend, Ryan.

A police spokesman said Friday investigators believe they know the shooting motive, based on a brief conversation between an officer and the suspect, 15-year-old freshman Jamar Siler. Police arrested Siler minutes after the shooting — and three blocks from school.

Siler is now held without bond, charged with first-degree murder. His attorney, public defender Mark Stephens, did not return a call for comment Friday.

McDonald was white and Siler is black. But the shooting “had nothing to do with being gang-related or racially motivated,” police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said.

He suggested more may be revealed at a court hearing next Thursday.

McDonald’s pastor doesn’t know what sparked the exchange — authorities say Siler and McDonald knew each other — but he said he thinks he knows what happened. He recalled a church youth trip to the Great Smoky Mountains in which Ryan was quick to let the clergyman know, “Pastor, I can take care of myself.”

“I think he probably stood his ground, and that ultimately led to his death,” said the Rev. Dan Mayhle of West View Wesleyan Church.

Ryan’s father, Joseph Anthony “Joey” McDonald, put it another way as Mayhle spoke with him after the shooting. “He said, ‘I told Ryan that someday that mouth of his is going to get him in trouble, but I never thought a kid would pull a trigger and shoot him.’ ”

Ryan’s friend, Rochester, said he heard the suspect had been picking on Ryan on the bus to school.

“The dude was slapping him and smacking him on the back of his hands,” he said, though Ryan had never mentioned it to Rochester.

Joey McDonald and Ryan’s mother, Barbara Jean McDonald, both have criminal records pre-dating his birth — the father mostly for drugs and the mother mostly for prostitution. Both are out of jail now.

It was one of the crosses for Ryan to bear. He lived with his grandmother, Genny Miller, who gained custody of him years ago.

Ryan went bald at 3 from alopecia. To cope with teasing from other kids, he developed “a little chip on his shoulder, an attitude,” Mayhle said.

“It was just something he had to do in this area to survive,” his uncle Roger McDonald said. “He had this tough exterior, but if you really knew him he was not like that at all.”

In recent months, parents have formed a group to raise concerns about Central High, including a perceived lack of discipline and unsafe conditions. The Friends of Central High School Web site includes several handwritten letters demanding a crackdown on fights and unruly behavior.

David McMillan, a Central High grad and organizer of the group, said he worried about “the warning signs that there was a culture that lacked discipline was there.”

Jim McIntyre, less than two months on the job as superintendent of the 52,000-student Knox County school system, said administrators are working with parents to improve the situation. But he added, “I don’t think anyone could have anticipated or would have anticipated a tragedy of this magnitude.”

“We take our security very seriously,” he said. “But if there is a specific individual who is dead set on perpetrating a crime, an act of violence, on another individual, which was the case in this situation, they’re likely to find a way to do it.”

Both McDonald and Siler had been involved with the juvenile courts before, but authorities refused to give details. School officials said they couldn’t reveal whether either had been discipline problems.

Roger McDonald said he had challenged his nephew to work hard in school as his ticket out of Lonsdale.

“It is just ironic that that is where his life ended,” he said. “Trying to get out.”