Blackshear man who took Mustang, then killed himself had suffered from depression, mother says

A Blackshear man who led police on a high-speed chase Monday down U.S. 1 in a stolen Mustang before taking his own life suffered from depression and wanted to take a last ride in a car he loved, his distraught mother said Wednesday.

“My son was not a car thief. He was fighting depression,’’ Wanda Scoville said during a telephone interview. “He just wanted to take his last ride in that car.”

Ryan Allen Blankenship pointed a pistol at a salesman at Robbie Roberson Ford in Waycross and then drove a 2012 Mustang Boss 302 through the showroom’s open double doors.

He sped south into Folkston at more than 130 mph before the car ran out of gas about 5:40 p.m. Blankenship ran from the car and hid in a ditch beside a railroad track for a few minutes before shooting himself, investigators said.

Blankenship had just turned 21 Friday and had been in the Marines until he received a general discharge about a year ago after refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, she said.

Her son idolized the Marines and had joined while still in Pierce County High School under a delayed enlistment program, Scoville said.

But once he had gone through his training, Blankenship told his family “he didn’t know if he could shoot and kill somebody,” she said.

After his discharge, Blankenship said some of the Marines he knew had died in Afghanistan and that “hurt him because he wasn’t with them,’’ Scoville said.

“He was fighting this. He was so down on himself,’’ she said.

Scoville said she and Blankenship’s two older sisters all tried to persuade him to get counseling, and at times he would agree then back out.

Scoville said they wanted to take him out for his birthday Friday but he turned down their offer.

Then Monday he took a 9mm pistol from the home of his sister and brother-in-law, with whom he was living, and rode his motorcycle to the Ford dealership, Scoville said.

Charlton County Sheriff Dobie Conner said it was a tough day for all the officers involved especially when they saw how young he was.
“When I first saw him, I would have sworn he wasn’t more than 14 or 15 years old,’’ Conner said.

He said there was also nothing else the officers could have done, whom he praised for “not crowding him, not forcing him to do anything.”
As he has pondered how it could have turned out differently, Conner said he comes back to one chilling thought.

“I’ve thought a whole lot about what might have happened if that car hadn’t run out of gas. He could have had an awful wreck and killed a lot of other people,’’ Conner said.

The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Pearson-Dial Funeral Home, 659 Main St., Blackshear. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Pearson-Dial chapel, with burial to follow at Enon Cemetery.