Submitted by Richard Gedeon The Independent (clevelandindependent.com)
In the quiet, early-morning hours of January 14, a faint orange glow danced in the window of a tudor mansion on West Market, in a tony section of Akron that sees little real crime. The glow became more brilliant and gray smoke soon began billowing into the night sky. Around 2:40 a.m., a man inside the home called 9-1-1. A neighbor called too, after a large noise woke her up.
But the fire trucks were running late—following cutbacks by the mayor, Akron’s Fire Department is spread thin these days, after all. Now outside the home, Larry Harmon called 9-1-1 again. 26-year-old Ryan Johnson, his friend and housemate, was trapped inside, somewhere on the second floor, where heavy smoke was quickly replacing breathable oxygen.
At 2:45, about five minutes after Larry’s first call, AFD’s ladder-9 arrived. They stormed into the house and burst into Ryan’s bedroom. His king-size bed was ablaze, the bedding spreading the flames.
Ladder-9 found Ryan in the adjacent bathroom, in the tub. He was unresponsive, but still alive. A firefighter grabbed him and dashed out of the house, handing Ryan over to an EMS crew. The EMS made haste for Akron General Medical Center. But it was too late.
In the weeks following Ryan’s death, friends and family have tried to make sense of what really happened that night. Many, including members of the media, were not surprised to see the young man meet such a bizarre end. After all, Ryan was no typical twenty-six year old. He was an eccentric prodigy with a successful business. And his life had always been fodder for local news.
Ryan Johnson was a kid lost in the American Dream, a 21st Century Holden Caulfield.
At an early age, Ryan taught himself computer programming. By the time he was 16, he was running an internet marketing company, getting paid to direct internet users to other internet sites. Later, this became known as spamming, but it was all totally legit at the time. He developed programs, most notably FiReToolz, which he marketed to other programmers.
Fresh out of high school, he made enough loot to buy custom-made cars, a “smart house” on Granger Road in Bath that talked to its occupants, and pretty much anything else he wanted. He helped some friends start their own businesses, gave others a place to stay if they needed it.
Like many other young prodigies, trouble followed Ryan’s every move. Brandy, a friend of Ryan’s, posted online: “As he got older and [he] came into a situation of ‘too much too soon’, he took wrong turns. This does not take away from the fact that he was a good person.”
As he continued to succeed in business, Ryan became prone to manic episodes. He was diagnosed with a mental illness that required him to take Lithium, regularly. Sometimes these episodes manifested themselves as strange behavior, sometimes there were outbursts, sometimes he just gave things away.
The entrepreneur made headlines in 2006 when, after a breakup with his girlfriend, he destroyed the car he bought for her to drive. His legend grew after he caused $80,000 in damage to his house and moved his living room into a creek, piece by piece. His neighbors called the police; Ryan got tazed. His friend, Larry, caught it on tape. He put the footage online, further driving traffic to his websites. He hired friends to fix the damages.
The smart house was auctioned off after Ryan stopped making payments on it. For a time, Ryan disappeared to California, but Akron called him back. And so did a federal grand jury.
Ryan moved into the mansion at 1100 West Market Street around April of 2009, with Larry and another friend. In May, a grand jury handed down a two-count indictment for unpaid taxes. The charges claimed he had underreported his income in 2002 and 2003 for his company, RJ2 Internet Services. Ryan was placed under house arrest. One friend moved out, and another, Aaron Evans, moved in. All three often worked together on various projects. Ryan was idea man, Larry and Aaron the muscle. Whenever they weren’t working, they threw parties.
At the time of his death, business was booming again – new projects with programmers were in the works, he had purchased a distributorship and scores of cases of MonaVie, an anti-oxident fruit juice, and planned to launch a large-scale ad campaign for it. It looked like he could be off of house arrest as early as May.
The night of January 13th, Ryan made a dangerous decision. He dropped acid. And in one way or another, it appears to have led to his death.
At the house were Ryan and Larry, and Ryan’s personal trainer, Kyle Otto. Ryan had a gym built in his house, so Kyle was there often. In fact, Kyle and Ryan were planning to start another new business with Ryan’s sister. Aaron was out of the country, in Belize. Ryan procured some LSD. He called people to see if they wanted to party with him.
Donovan King received a call. He did not partake, but remembers seeing an online post from Larry at about seven or eight stating that he was “going down the rabbit hole”.
Details of what happened next are murky at best. Ryan spent some time online. One of the last conversations he had was on Skype just after midnight:
guevara0225: yo
rj2kix (Ryan): unlaocked
shiestoa
ah airamsiam
sjhaiastamma
alghothright
finezsee
,senmze
plus mignith
su knwo thwa ti’m saying
guevara0225: haha wtf are you on
An astute observer at digitalgangster.com (an internet community Ryan frequented) noted, “most of the letter changes are either keys next to or above/below one another, or based on common typos I make when I’m typing fast unloacked”.
According to a friend of Ryan’s, he started acting “goofy, almost like a three-year-old having a tantrum.” He threw things, put towels in a drain and turned the water on.
The friend of Ryan was told that Larry and Kyle locked Ryan into his bedroom by pushing furniture against one exit and taking a door handle off the other.
Larry says that Ryan was awake when they left him but admits Ryan needed help getting upstairs, and that he and Kyle put him into bed. He says that’s the last time he saw Ryan.
Ryan’s room has three doors: one leads to an outdoor hall; another to an adjacent bedroom, beyond which was a flight of stairs; a third leads to the bathroom. The bed, if ablaze, could have blocked his exit to the outdoor hall, but the door to the other bedroom should have been an available escape option if it was not blocked. But somehow Ryan ended up in the bathroom as the house filled with poisonous smoke.
Many questions remain about the events leading up to Ryan’s final day but Akron Police have not yet questioned Donovan King and other friends who suspect there is more to this story.
Though he has not been questioned, Larry retained a lawyer within 24 hours of Ryan’s death. He says he doesn’t know how the fire started. He says the door handle may have been off, but it was an old door, and that happened often. He took Ryan’s laptop from the scene and currently has it in his garage. Both he and Aaron have access to all of Ryan’s personal financial accounts and have already accessed them. Larry told the Independent that Aaron took money out of Ryan’s Paypal account and gave it to Ryan’s sister. According to Larry’s Facebook page, he is planning to move to Belize.
Kyle declined comment. He cited his distrust of the media following previous stories about Ryan.
The Summit County coroner has not yet released cause of death.
In the meantime, Ryan’s death, much like his abbreviated life, has become a mystery of its own.
– By Rick Gedeon
-Additional reporting by James Renner
Comments below are from clevelandindependent.com
anon says:
8 February 2010 at 1:31 pm
Rick, before you enlist the help of Nancy Drew(James), you should think about how the said person will collect factual evidence. This article is a great example of how a journalist will make up anything just to get the story. My advice would be to take this article down and do some more “field work”. I think that if you do you will find that you should not be putting energy into slandering friends of Ryan but however finding out why the fire department took so long to arrive at the scene. The chief said 2-3min, but that is a blatant lie. If you can pull the 911 calls you can clearly see that a first call was placed 10min before the alleged “first call”. Someone is trying to cover up a big 911 mistake.
deadon says:
8 February 2010 at 5:27 pm
How is any of this “Made up” – it’s is all extremely accurate and factual.
How would you know the information is not factual anyway?
This has nothing to do with the Akron Fire Department. It has to do with the fact that the two other people who were there (Kyle and Larry), barricaded Ryan in the bedroom when they knew he was unstable and not well at that time. You don’t barricade a person in a room under any circumstances.
The situation should have been handled differently, but they acted in a reckless manner and created the risk.
anon says:
8 February 2010 at 6:27 pm
you are a terrible person. stop creating drama. you have no involvement AT ALL. I know its hard for you to accept the fact that you were not around and not recognized, but you are just going to have to deal with that. This is all coming from the guy who didn’t even have the dignity to pay his final respects. Maybe if you email the editor he will replace the picture for this article with a picture of you and Ryan so that you can feel good about your self.
How would YOU know the information is factual anyway?
deadon says:
8 February 2010 at 7:20 pm
What are you even talking about? This isnt a contest which is what you think it is obviously.
I think you are the one who is concerned about soaking up the glory, etc.
That has nothing to do with it. But bravo, for your juvenile thought process
padillac says:
9 June 2010 at 6:11 am
barricade ryan in his bedroom while he’s having a violently bad trip.
ok, i can see that.
but a fire breaks out, and you two couldn’t break him loose before the fire department could respond?
i hope to god you were tripping balls. not that i believe in a god to place hope in, but what i do believe in is logic and probability, by the time you read this i will have already talked to at least one of you. i have a raging clue that the akron police department dropped the fucking ball.
padillac says:
9 June 2010 at 6:13 am
i don’t know what’s been lied to rest behind closed doors, but until i know exactly what happened this isn’t over by a long shot.
