Questions Linger After Tragic Death Of Island Roofer On New Year's Day

Just three days before Kevin Ryan was found deceased and covered in snow at a property on Hummock Pond Road on New Year's Day, he was upbeat while sitting in the Barnstable House of Corrections for his virtual court hearing, inquiring about whether the New England Patriots had defeated the New York Jets the day prior. Ryan, 71, seemed eager to put his mid-December low-speed police chase incident, which had landed him in jail for more than two weeks, behind him. Ryan agreed to a plea deal that would allow him to be released from jail and return to his roofing work on Nantucket.

But in a matter of days, Ryan’s life came to a tragic end. Police officers responding to a report of a breaking and entering incident found his body on the lawn of a multi-million dollar home near Cisco Beach, where it is believed he froze to death. Ryan, who had been living out of a truck that police impounded after the low-speed chase, had apparently taken shelter inside the home following his release from jail.

In the aftermath of Ryan’s passing, questions linger among those who knew him as to whether more could have been done to prevent his death and whether authorities could have made accommodations to help Ryan, considering his circumstances. The Current spoke to numerous people involved in the investigation, reviewed police reports, and revisited Ryan’s court proceedings to seek answers to those questions.

Dr. Tim Lepore – the island’s chief medical examiner – was called to the property at 281 Hummock Pond Road by Nantucket Police officers to evaluate Ryan on New Year's Day at 12:56 p.m. Lepore pronounced Ryan deceased at 1:17 p.m.

"He'd taken off a lot of his clothes, and he was outside on a very cold and windy night. You have to presume that that's what killed him," Lepore said.

Beyond discarding some of his clothes in the frigid temperatures, Lepore said there was also evidence of terminal burrowing, both instinctual behaviors brought on by severe hypothermia.

"He had all these scratches on his legs that were probably from him being out there rooting around," Lepore said. "I think that he got drunk and he got into trouble. Should the cops have taken his car away? Well, he was driving and raising hell (referencing the low-speed chase), so I don't think you put him back in the car. Should he have gone to The Warming Place and stayed there? I'm not sure he wanted to. I don't think there was any gross negligence. I think there are always things you can look back on and wonder what if that had been done differently. The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Ryan was found by the Nantucket Police approximately 20 yards from the residence that had been broken into. He had no pulse when an officer felt for one. Almost all other details of the incident were redacted in a police report obtained by the Current.

Friends of Ryan who spoke with the Current over the past month said he was an avid sports fan who loved talking about Boston sports whenever he got the chance. He particularly enjoyed criticizing the Boston Red Sox. Ryan’s friends said he was a gentle, kind man, but also wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and say what he wanted to say - sometimes rubbing people the wrong way. For years, he worked as a roofer and picked up small jobs across the island. He was very routine-oriented and didn’t like to deviate from his standard day, which included sitting at Miacomet Pond, smoking a cigarette, and reading a book. Ryan’s eyesight worsened as he got older, so after sitting at the pond, he would arrive at the Miacomet Golf Course for lunch at either 3:07 or 4:07 p.m. to eat some lunch, his friends said, and drink two or three beers. He would always leave before it got dark since he had trouble seeing at night.

Miacomet Golf Course General Manager Sean Oberly told the Current that Ryan’s passing had hit hard among everyone who works at the course. They plan to hold a brief celebration for Ryan on February 15th, his birthday, with a toast in his memory at 3:07 p.m. sharp.

“He was a friend to all of us, and he was a great friend to Miacomet,” Oberly said. “He really was, and we are going to miss him. We miss him now. He was a good friend to us. It is so tough, man. It is so tough.”

Ryan was released from the Barnstable House of Corrections in the late morning of December 31st after the plea deal had been reached on charges he was facing following the low-speed chase across the island on December 15th.

The court-appointed lawyer who helped Ryan get out of jail that day said he was unaware of his 71-year-old client’s circumstances that would lead to the tragic outcome on Nantucket just hours later.

“I am sick over it, and I will be for a long time,” said attorney Glenn Herlihy, who had been appointed to represent Ryan on the charges stemming from the police chase. “As I piece things together, it seems he was living in his car, and then when police took it away, that was armageddon for him. But he never told me that. I was concerned he'd get stranded in Bourne and homeless there, even for the short term (after being released from the Barnstable House of Corrections).”

In the plea deal, Ryan had numerous charges continued without a finding, including leaving the scene of property damage, resisting arrest, and assault & battery with a dangerous weapon. The charges would have been dismissed on the condition that he complete his probation without further violations. District Court Judge James Sullivan ruled that Ryan would not be responsible for paying restitution for the damages caused during the car chase, given his financial situation and to help Ryan get back on his feet. Sullivan dismissed outright a handful of other charges stemming from the police chase.

Herlihy said that Ryan’s case was set to be his last on Nantucket before retiring from practicing law entirely.

The plea deal, which was agreed to on December 29th via Zoom while Ryan sat in jail, was finalized in person two days later, on December 31st, in Nantucket District Court. This was done in large part to provide Ryan with state-funded transportation from Barnstable to Nantucket, given his financial situation and inability to purchase a ferry ticket on his own, and to prevent him from becoming stranded in Barnstable if he had been released on the mainland. Herlihy expressed concern to the court that he didn't want Ryan getting stranded on the Cape during the December 29th hearing.

During that hearing, which included prosecutors from the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Office, Judge Sullivan, and Herlihy, Ryan told prosecutors that he wanted to admit what he had done and take responsibility for the incident, prompting him to seek the plea deal. Striking other vehicles with his truck during the chase was not intentional, Ryan said, and he acknowledged making a series of bad decisions. He expressed regret and wanted the matter resolved.

Ryan also inquired about his vehicle and whether he could get it back upon his release from jail. Judge Sullivan told Ryan the truck was outside his jurisdiction but directed him to the Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV), which Sullivan and Herlihy said could help him resolve the issues.

Nantucket Police Lieutenant Angus MacVicar confirmed that Ryan’s vehicle had been impounded because it was unregistered and uninsured. He said once the police became aware of the car being uninsured, they had no choice but to have it impounded - especially after the dangerous low-speed chase that went on for miles, putting officers and other drivers at risk.

"He can't legally, and we can't allow him to operate it because holy Moses we would take on and absorb the liability of him operating with an uninsured vehicle," MacVicar said. "The registered part is easily dealt with, but the insured part? That's big ramifications. If it gets in an accident, we would own it. So if they have to get an inspection sticker, no big deal. Even unregistered is not that big of a deal. However, when something is uninsured, that's a very big deal. That means there's no liability. Where's the liability lie if the police stop a car that has no insurance and then allow them to drive off, and God forbid something happens? It is 100 percent the responsibility of the police officer and the town that they work for. So all day long, that's how that would go."

It is unknown whether Ryan sought the RMV's assistance in getting his vehicle back following his release from jail.

"No one is allowed to ever leave a car stop with a vehicle that's uninsured," MacVicar continued. "Never are they allowed to do that. Now unregistered, if they're close to their house or something? Yeah, go ahead, drive home, go down to the registry, get the thing fixed. Or pull into this parking lot, the Faregrounds is right there, just get to the registry and get this thing fixed. But not uninsured because without a doubt, the person is going to then pull into the Faregrounds and run over a motorcycle or something. That's sort of the way that that goes and why it was towed in the first place in this situation."

Ryan never mentioned living in his vehicle during any of his public court sessions, and his living situation was apparently unclear to those involved with his case before the car was impounded. In the December 16th police log that documented Ryan’s arrest, police listed his home address as 33 Bartlett Road. The Nantucket District Court confirmed to the Current that it also had the same 33 Bartlett Road address listed as Ryan’s home address in its files.

Multiple friends of Ryan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he previously lived at that address years ago, and would often tell people that was where he resided, despite living out of his vehicle or elsewhere on Nantucket.

Ryan briefly stayed at The Warming Place - the only overnight shelter for the unhoused on Nantucket - on New Year’s Eve, according to multiple people who interacted with him that day. But he did not stay long and left. He had allegedly been encouraged by people in the past to go to The Warming Place to use its shelter and resources, but Ryan apparently never had any desire to go there or stay for long, preferring to do his own thing.

MacVicar said that when Ryan or anyone else is brought in for booking, the first two questions asked are: "What is your name and address?"

"We have certainly been given 'I'm homeless,' or 'I don't have a house, actually,' or 'I'm in between houses,'" MacVicar said. "So when that occurs, we make that note. We wouldn't have just gone with a former address. We would have asked the same question, because people move all the time on the island. So we update the file.

"I don't know definitively that he was living in that truck, and the reason why I say that is we never responded to calls where he was sleeping in that truck, and we certainly would have," MacVicar continued. "So what I mean by that is that we definitely go to other homeless people who live in their cars multiple times. I'm not saying that he was living in his car or wasn't. I'm not saying that whatsoever. He very well may have been. But he also might have been living on occasion in his truck, but also could have been living somewhere else, maybe not 33 Bartlett, but crashing at someone else's house too."

MacVicar acknowledged the tragic circumstances surrounding Ryan’s death and said the incident has been difficult for the officers who responded to the scene as well. But after reviewing the totality of the police department’s response, MacVicar said he did not believe officers could have done anything differently to avoid the outcome. He emphasized that NPD often provides assistance and referrals to individuals in need or those in difficult circumstances.

"I've got to tell you that we wouldn't do anything different," MacVicar said. "There's no part, there's no trigger, there's no follow-up question, there's no procedure that we do that we didn't do that would help this ultimate result. There really isn't. There's no other thing. Even if somebody was to report that they were homeless, where do you insert trying to help with any litany of problems? You could say, 'Well, this one's clear.' Well, it's really not. I mean it is now because the poor guy died. But it's really not in and of itself because people have chosen to do this (on Nantucket). If they ask for help, you can be certain that not only are we going to help provide it, we're going to document we did and that help is going to be all of those things. It's going to be Fairwinds. It's going to be The Warming Place. It's going to be the off-Island facilities. We're going to share any and all the information that we have, whether they so choose to use it or not. What could we have done that would be different, and are we doing anything any different now? The answer is really no because nothing that was reported to us, and what we were dealing with was a motor vehicle violation where the driver then drove off after being stopped at a very low speed and ultimately ended up in a scenario where he was arrested based on the actions that he did post being stopped for the motor vehicle violation, and then answered all the booking questions and at no time saying that he was homeless, needed a place to say, needed help, or anything like that."

The Current also spoke with the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s office in the aftermath of the incident, which declined an on-the-record interview but provided a statement on the case.

“Any loss of life is tragic, particularly when it involves someone who was vulnerable,” Danielle Whitney, Director of Community Programs and Public Relations, said on behalf of the office. “While we cannot comment on specific circumstances, the District Attorney’s office believes it is important to continue looking for ways the justice system can better connect vulnerable individuals with treatment and support services with the goal of preventing future harm and loss.”

If anyone needs assistance or a warm place to be, The Warming Place Nantucket can help. Its winter program runs from November 1st to April 30th. It serves lunch and also distributes gift cards. Its day shelter is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday and Thursday, at Summer Street Church.

The overnight shelter is open every night from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. with check-in from 6-7 p.m. every night. The Warming Place serves dinner and distributes gift cards. From Sunday through Wednesday, the overnight shelter is at the First Congregational Church (62 N Centre Street). From Thursday through Saturday, the overnight shelter is at Summer Street Church (1 Summer Street).

The Warming Place Nantucket’s office phone number is 774-325-8970.

The Mental Health Crisis number is 508-221-3315.

They can also be reached via email at info@thewarmingplace.org.

You can learn more about The Warming Place Nantucket here.