{"id":13166,"date":"2016-07-12T07:23:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13166"},"modified":"2016-07-12T07:23:55","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:23:55","slug":"murder-victims-family-remembers-a-really-good-kid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/murder-victims-family-remembers-a-really-good-kid\/","title":{"rendered":"Murder victim’s family remembers ‘a really good kid’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Trout\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of Eakin family<\/p>

Ryan Eakin is shown with a sea trout he caught while fishing from a bridge in New Jersey on a family vacation.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ryan\u202fEakin\u2019s\u202fpresence permeates the family home near Baxendale a few miles west of Helena.<\/p>\n

A large, framed pastel-and-charcoal\u202fportrait of a bison\u202fthat he drew\u202fadorns a\u202fliving room\u202fwall. Old traps, which Ryan\u202fpainstakingly cleaned using vinegar, hang from the fireplace mantel. A photograph of him at 9 years old, posing with the mountain goat\u202fthat he hunted with his father, is at the base of the stairway. In the corner rests a wooden walking stick Ryan carved\u2014not to use, but to keep his hands busy. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe found it while we were exploring the rocks near our house\u202fat\u202fBaxendale,\u201d his sister Haley\u202fEakin said. \u201cHe carved it while we watched TV.\u202fWe used to go exploring every day\u202fwhen we lived in Rimini\u2014we would pack a lunch and go to the Big Rock\u202for go catch frogs by\u202fTenmile\u202fCreek.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe decorated this place,\u201d added his father, Kirk\u202fEakin, pointing to the collections of license plates,\u202farrowheads,\u202ftobacco tins\u202fand\u202fvintage beer cans\u202fthat Ryan collected and now accent\u202fone of the bathrooms and other rooms of the house.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sign above the toilet\u2014DuPont Explosives\u2014was a wooden crate sign he found in\u202fan old cabin the family owns in\u202fRimini. He thought hanging it there was funny. He found a lot of the other\u202fold\u202fitems\u202fin\u202fboxes\u202fin the\u202fcabins, and would spend hours cleaning and polishing\u202fto add them to the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s\u202fhands\u202fand heart\u202fwere stilled on Thursday, when the 20-year-old\u202fwas shot and killed in a parking lot near Montana and Bozeman streets. Austin Lee Kroll-McLaughlin is jailed, facing charges of deliberate homicide and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence in connection with the case.<\/p>\n

Ryan\u2019s parents,\u202fKirk and Cathy\u202fEakin, and his sisters Haley, 19, and Ashley, 14, are trying to cope with the unexpected\u202floss of their son and brother. On Sunday, they mixed laughter with tears as they shared\u202fmemories of the young man with the shy smile who loved to hunt and fish,\u202fski, shoot hoops and spend time with his family\u202fand friends<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cOur favorite thing to do together was to go on drives\u201d in the Toyota Celica that he loved, Ashley recalled. \u201cWe would always listen to music and he would sing along, mostly to rap songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan was an Eagle Scout who earned his badge making\u202fa\u202fraptor rehabilitation house\u202ffor Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’\u202fMontana Wild Center. He graduated from Capital High School in 2014 and was taking business classes at Helena Technical College. Ryan was artistic and lively, an incredibly organized and a gentle soul with a positive outlook,\u202faccording to his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met with some of his friends today, and\u202fthey said that\u202fhe was always there for them,\u201d Kirk said. \u201cHe was always positive, making negative situations positive. \u2018Everything will be all right\u2019 was his saying whenever it looked\u202fbad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan was nicknamed \u201cThe Baseball Kid\u201d in a Helena Independent Record article in 2007, after the then-12-year-old\u202fwrote an award-winning essay on slugger Reggie Jackson.\u202fWhen he was 9,\u202fRyan traveled to California\u202fwith his dad\u202fto represent Montana,\u202fafter winning a\u202fMutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom\u202fessay contest on how to save the threatened Canada lynx. He also was a\u202fMontana\u202fjunior duck stamp\u202fdesign\u202fwinner\u202for finalist\u202ffive times.<\/p>\n

In his fanatically organized bedroom\u2014his mother used to tease him about his insistence on making the bed even if he was late for school\u2014are collections of matchbox cars, old wooden fishing lures, a\u202fsculpture made from Red Bull cans and a fort made out of toothpicks that he cut, glued together and painted.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know what he wanted to do with his life,\u202fbut his family felt that his childhood artistic abilities should have been further pursued.<\/p>\n

\u201cRyan wanted to be an architect\u202fwhen he was young,\u201d Cathy said. \u201cHe was a really good kid, and anyone who knows him knows that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kirk laughs, recalling the time he and Ryan took a beginners fly-tying class at Cross Currents. Kirk wanted to take remedial fly tying\u202fagain, but Ryan moved on to the intermediate class.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d sit with the old guys, tying flies with them, when he was only 9 or 10,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not sure what led up to their son\u2019s shooting, saying they don\u2019t know much more than what was reported in the newspaper and on television. But they want the Helena community to know that regardless of the circumstances, Ryan was a good young man whose life was cut short too soon.<\/p>\n

A celebration of Ryan\u2019s life is set for 1 p.m. Saturday, July 16, at Our Redeemer\u2019s Church on North Benton.<\/p>\n

Eve Byron is a freelance reporter in Helena and can be reached at 406\/422-6601 or at\u00a0evebyron@hotmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan\u202fEakin\u2019s\u202fpresence permeates the family home near Baxendale a few miles west of Helena. A large, framed pastel-and-charcoal\u202fportrait of a bison\u202fthat he drew\u202fadorns a\u202fliving room\u202fwall. Old traps, which Ryan\u202fpainstakingly cleaned using vinegar, hang from the fireplace mantel. A photograph of him at 9 years old, posing with the mountain goat\u202fthat he hunted with his father, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":13167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[4676,705,4675,4674],"class_list":["post-13166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-austin-lee-kroll-mclaughlin","tag-helena","tag-rimini","tag-ryan-eakin","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}