Son on probation for previous attack on mother
Beloved Painter Elementary school teacher sought a restraining order in 2006
SAN JOSE » When Ryan Richard Garner beat his mother so savagely that she died at a hospital days later, police say, he was on probation for assaulting the beloved elementary school teacher two years ago.
The earlier conviction is part of a violent history documented in criminal and family court filings involving Garner, 35, and the victim, 57-year-old Cynthia Mykkanen. She also sought a restraining order against her son in 2006.
Garner was arraigned on a murder charge Tuesday, a day after Mykkanen died at Regional Medical Center of San Jose. A police statement accompanying the charging documents lays out in chilling detail how detectives believe Garner killed his mother, then left her unconscious at the emergency room.
Police have not released a motive for the fatal attack. Garner declined a jail interview with this news organization Wednesday.
A native of Virginia, Mykkanen attended San Jose State University and was a veteran teacher at Painter Elementary School in East San Jose. She also taught at Harry Slonaker Academy, according to an obituary submitted by her family.
Mykkanen is survived by her son, four brothers and a sister, and nieces and nephews. In her obituary, family members wrote that “most of all, she loved her son Ryan.” Family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations in her memory be made to any domestic-abuse center.
Hilaria Bauer, superintendent
of the Alum Rock Union School District, said Mykkanen “poured her heart into supporting, nurturing, and educating our students” and lauded her advocacy for sending students to science camp. She also recalled when Mykkanen was her student in the teacher’s certification program at San Jose State.
“I will always remember fondly her smile, and her zest for life and her love of being an educator,” Bauer wrote in a letter to the district families.
Bauer wrote that counselors will be made available to people struggling with the loss.
Detective Brian Meeker wrote in an investigative summary that when officers were called to the hospital around 2:35 p.m. on July 18, a security guard told them that a man claiming to be her son said Mykkanen had been beaten by her unidentified boyfriend and that “he was leaving to go find him.” The guard also reported that the son “appeared to be intoxicated” before driving away in a pickup truck. Family and friends later told police that Mykkanen did not have a boyfriend.
Doctors determined soon after that Mykkanen, who was unresponsive and had visible injuries to her face and head, showed no signs of brain activity and was put on life support.
After identifying Mykkanen and viewing security video from the hospital, detectives that same evening went to her apartment on Cortese Circle, where she lived with her son. Meeker wrote that security video at the apartment complex showed someone resembling Garner carrying his mother into a silver Nissan Titan pickup that had been rented to Mykkanen earlier in the month.
When police entered the victim’s apartment, they discovered a bloody scene, Meeker wrote, and signs that her head had been slammed repeatedly into a wall. A security guard at the complex told police that about two hours before she was taken to the hospital, he “saw the victim run from her apartment.”
The security guard said he “then saw an arm reach out of the front door, grab the victim and pull her back inside,” Meeker wrote. “He could not identify the person whose arm he saw.”
Later that night, detectives tracked Garner’s cellphone signal to the Great Mall of Milpitas and found the Nissan pickup unoccupied in the parking lot. From a distance, they watched a car pull up next to the truck, Garner get out of the car and into the truck, and both vehicles drive away, Meeker wrote.
Police stopped both vehicles near Blossom Hill Road and Highway 101. A police dog bit Garner after he got out of the truck “but failed to comply” with officers’ orders, police said.
The man driving the other car told detectives that Garner, whom he had met at a sober-living home, called him and asked to meet at the Great Mall. Garner reportedly told the friend that the blood visible on his face came from a bar fight, and the friend gave Garner wipes to clean the blood. Meeker wrote that police found those bloody wipes, and beer bottles that the friend had described, in a trash can at a gas station next to the mall.
Garner was arrested and initially booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of attempted murder, a charge that was amended to murder after Mykkanen died. He was in the second year of a three-year probation period after his no-contest plea to the assault and false imprisonment of his mother in November 2017.
Meeker wrote that during the 2017 attack, “Garner violently assaulted the victim for a period of about 20 minutes” and “choked her and threatened to kill her.” Besides the probation, Garner was sentenced to nine months in jail but was given credit for time served.