None of the police officers who work in St. Paul’s Eastern District were on the job 30 years ago when Officer Ron Ryan Jr. was killed in the line of duty. Some weren’t even born yet. But now their patrol station will bear the name of their East Side colleague.
The station was dedicated to Ryan on Monday, exactly 30 years after he and Officer Tim Jones were fatally shot by the same man.
The station’s entrance on Payne Avenue is now adorned with a full-size mural: a photo collage of Ryan and the words, “There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.”
The phrase “isn’t just something we say. It’s something we live,” Eastern District Chief Salim Omari told current and retired officers who gathered with firefighters and family members of Ryan and Jones at a ceremony outside the building on Monday, saying they were there to “remember two men who will forever be a part of our city and the East Side.”
The St. Paul Police Department’s K-9 Center was previously named after Jones, who was killed along with his K-9 Laser on August 26, 1994.
Ryan, 26, was watching a man — Guy Harvey Baker — who was sleeping in a car in a parking lot at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood around 7 a.m. Baker, also 26, feared Ryan would learn he was wanted in Iowa on a probation violation stemming from a weapons possession conviction.
Baker grabbed a revolver from his lap and shot Ryan.
Dozens of officers joined the search for Ryan’s killer. Jones had the day off, but he came to help.
K-9 Laser picked up Baker’s trail around 10 a.m. on Conway Street, not far from Johnson Parkway. Baker heard the dog whining outside a fish house where he was hiding, saw Jones through the window and shot the 36-year-old officer through the side of the house with the gun he had stolen from Ryan. When Laser bit him in the leg, he also shot the dog.
Baker was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and remains incarcerated at Oak Park Heights Prison.
“To this day, this is one of the most terrifying days” in the city’s history, Mayor Melvin Carter said during Monday’s ceremony.
Ryan and Jones’ “sacrifice and service will be remembered forever in this city,” Carter said. “The names and the pictures on this building are a reflection of careers well done, but they also remind us that the safety we hold so dear cannot be taken for granted.”
Remembering Ronnie
Jones’ son, Matt, is now a St. Paul police officer, and he attended Monday’s ceremony with fellow officers. Maria Ryan Hanggi, Ron Ryan Jr.’s younger sister, sat in the front row outside the building with their mother, Kelly Ryan; the younger Ryan’s widow, Ann Kluender; and other family members. Ron Ryan Sr. died in 2022.
“When they asked if anyone from the Ryan family wanted to say a few words, all I could think about was my dad and Ronnie arguing on the microphone,” Hanggi told the assembled crowd.
Her brother “would love this,” Hanggi continued. “… He would be like, ‘A building with my name on it and pictures and images all over it?’ He would eat this up. So, you did good for him.”
For those who didn’t know Ron Ryan Jr., Hanggi said of her brother: “He had a larger than life personality. He brought joy to every room he walked into. When Ronnie arrived, the party started. … He didn’t let little rules get in the way of a good time or a laugh. I believe God gave him grace and allowed him to live his life to the fullest, knowing that it would be a short life here on earth.”
Ryan, more than anything, “had a great love for people, and he lived his life that way,” Hanggi said.
He graduated from the Hill-Murray School in 1985 and went on to attend several colleges to find his passion. “At one point, Ronnie was in a fraternity at the university, but he didn’t even go to the school,” Hanggi recalls.
When Ryan Jr. decided to become a police officer, “he went all in,” she said. He studied law enforcement at Century College and worked as a parking attendant for the St. Paul Police Department to make ends meet. He graduated from the St. Paul Police Academy in 1993, following in his father’s footsteps, and became a St. Paul officer.
“It was very special to see Big Ron pin on Ronnie’s badge,” Hanggi said. “It was my dad’s honor and he was very proud of it.” One of the photos in the Eastern District mural shows the moment the badge was pinned.
Shortly before Ryan Jr. graduated from the academy, he and Ann were married. They bought a house together near Lake Phalen and had a special dog — a failed K-9. “Life was good,” his sister said. “Ronnie was very proud to be an officer in the town where he grew up.”
He had been an officer for a year when he was killed.
“Back then, it wasn’t really a thing that police officers were killed,” Hanggi said. “Unfortunately, in today’s society, it happens far too often.”
Two Burnsville police officers and a firefighter/paramedic were ambushed and killed in the line of duty in February.
Life taken ‘too soon…too meaningless’
Ryan Jr.’s widow remarried and had two children. Kluender remembered Ryan Jr. as a “wonderful man” whose “life was taken (far, far too soon and far too senselessly).”
When she walked through the doors of the Eastern District station and saw the large photos of Ryan Jr., “full of life, … it was hard not to get emotional,” she said.
The signs outside the building will be changed to read “Ron Ryan Jr. Eastern District” — words already embedded in the lobby by the murals. The wall on the other side of the Ryan Jr. mural is now a photo collage of the East Side community.
The idea for the project was a grassroots effort, according to Police Chief Axel Henry. Officers and a civilian employee came up with the idea and collected the old photos for the project.
Vomela Companies in St. Paul helped bring the project to life by donating their printing services. The remaining cost was about $6,000, Omari said.
“I’m just sorry it took 30 years,” Henry said, adding that he thought it was fitting that it came about on the milestone anniversary of the tragic day.
