A tragedy no one saw coming
Family’s joy over birth turns to grief just three days later
What doesn’t fit the tragedy that happened outside Kyle and Kristin Hart’s Redwood City home last week is the picture, snapped in the maternity ward: the young couple, beaming happily into the camera, tucked together into Kristin’s hospital bed with 2-year-old son Liam, embracing Ellie, his new baby sister they were about to bring home.
How do you explain that just days later, the popular Palo Alto middle school teacher tried to kill himself and was shot by Redwood City police who say he charged at them with a
butcher knife? The 33-yearold father died later that Monday at the hospital, three days after his daughter was born.
“I’m shocked,” said his
close friend, Jeff Missad. “Never in a million years did I expect this.”
The architect had spoken with Kyle Hart hours
after Ellie was born about getting their families together to make gingerbread houses ahead of the Christmas holiday. And everyone was eager to meet the baby.
No one anticipated what happened at the Harts’ home on Monday morning. But authorities said Kyle Hart apparently had struggled in the past with his mental health.
“We still have family members to talk to, but this was not a one-day breakdown,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, declining to go into detail.
Whatever mental health issues Hart may have had, the social studies and English teacher at Greene Middle School hid them from many co-workers and friends, who expressed shock at the death of a man they described as a devoted father and educator.
Missad met Hart through his wife, Christy, who had befriended Hart’s wife, Kristin, in a local moms group a couple of years ago. When their wives arranged for the pair to meet at a coffee shop, “we sort of became instant friends,” Missad said.
An avid surfer, Hart had taken Missad, a novice, to ride the waves in Santa Cruz a few times. They went snowboarding in Lake Tahoe and swimming with the kids at the Elks Lodge. Liam Hart and Missad’s
daughter, Maddie, went trick-or-treating together, and the families regularly shared home-cooked meals.
“It was genuine,” Missad said, adding that Kyle Hart never left a visit without a hug.
Kathy Forward, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Santa Clara County, isn’t familiar with the specifics of Hart’s situation. But, she said, joyous moments — a new home, a new baby — can also be “huge stressors” for some people, who often keep quiet to avoid the stigma that too often comes with mental health challenges.
“Something like that could cause someone to have a break,” Forward said.
Kyle and Kristin Hart, married in 2013, had bought a quaint two-bedroom house on a quiet street in Redwood City in April. A few blocks west of the El Camino Real, it was close to their jobs as teachers in Palo Alto and a short drive from the Elks Lodge
where they often ate dinner with Liam.
But suddenly, what was meant to be a haven for their future became a place of horror.
Redwood City officers went to Hart’s Lincoln Avenue home Monday morning after receiving a 911 call from his wife, “frantically requesting help and reporting that her husband was attempting to commit suicide by cutting his throat and wrists,” police said.
When the first two officers arrived, Kristin was outside covered with blood. She directed them to the backyard, where the officers found Kyle Hart holding a butcher knife and tried to coax him into dropping the blade.
But Hart reportedly held on to the cleaver and charged at the officers. After one officer failed to stop him with a Taser, police said, the second officer, a 20-year veteran who has not been identified, “was left with no choice” but to
use a gun to stop Hart.
Kristin had gone back inside the house to take care of the children when she heard the gunshots, said sources familiar with the investigation.
Hart was rushed to the hospital, where he died that day. Wagstaffe said that an autopsy has been completed but that an official cause of death was still pending.
“One of the questions we need to figure out is what killed him. Was it the injuries he inflicted on himself, the gunshots, or a combination of the two,” he said.
Hart’s death also hits a school district already shaken by a rash of teen suicides over the past decade.
Gerry Larvey, who retired in 2010 from Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, where Hart worked for several years before transferring to Greene, knows all too well how mental health struggles can tear families apart.
Larvey lost his 25-yearold daughter to suicide a decade ago and has volunteered with Forward’s organization.
“I think the police do good work overall,” Larvey said. But, “I still feel suicide by cop is much too common.”
Larvey got to know Kyle
Hart through a long-running book club made up mostly of educators. Hart joined in 2012 and suggested classics such as “The Great Gatsby,” “Fahrenheit 451” and George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion.”
“I had no idea he was struggling,” Larvey said. “He’s a very solid guy, a good citizen, a family man. He had every reason to live.”
Elks Lodge leader Lyle Personette knew Hart’s grandfather, George, a former Redwood City fire captain and a lifetime member of the organization. He was pleased to see the younger man join shortly after the elder Hart passed away in early 2017.
“He was a little reserved, quiet, it seemed, but I know a lot of people here enjoyed his company,” Personette said. “It’s really shocked the community.”
That shock and the tragic circumstances surrounding Hart’s death have prompted more than 1,000 people to donate nearly $200,000 in an online fundraiser for Kristin and the kids. The page is loaded with comments from former students and neighbors fondly remembering Hart and his family.
One of those people is Roy Klebe, the father of Hart’s former high school sweetheart. The pair dated while Hart was at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo and she was at Notre Dame in Belmont. The two went to prom together and took camping trips.
“It’s just hell on earth,” Klebe said of Hart’s death.
“He was part of the family.”
The pair eventually went to different colleges and headed their separate ways, but Klebe remembers Hart as a “super great kid” and felt the same when the two stumbled into each other several years ago at a Mexican restaurant.
Jen Koepnick went to graduate school at UC Santa Barbara with Kristin and remembers Hart coming to visit her. The three remained “great friends,” she said, when they all ended up teaching in Palo Alto. And she said she’s always surprised when she hears Kyle Hart described as quiet.
“He was always talking and so was I,” she said. “He was a great match when it came to conversation.”
Koepnick helped organize the online fundraiser and said she has been floored but not entirely surprised by the outpouring of support.
Now, Hart’s friends are left grappling with a situation few saw coming and wishing desperately for a better outcome.
“I think he should be in a hospital getting the help he needs rather than in a mortuary dead,” said Larvey, his book club friend. “His wife is a widow, his children are without a father. It just seems absolutely tragic.”
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that donations be made to the Redwood City Magical Bridge Playground.