Muscatine, Iowa, is grieving. On Monday afternoon, 52-year-old Ryan Willis McFarland shot and killed six members of his own family across three separate locations before taking his own life when police confronted him on the Riverfront Trail near the pedestrian bridge.
Among the dead was his 20-year-old daughter Ryle, a recent college graduate who had just accepted her first job as an elementary school teacher.
Police identified the six victims as Lesa McFarland, 51, Ryle McFarland, 20, Mark McFarland, 16, Ryan McFarland Jr., 13, Dakota Whitlow, 32, and Austin Harris, 29.
Muscatine Police Chief Anthony Kies said four of the victims were found at a home on Park Avenue, one at a residence on Mill Street, and one inside a business on Grandview Avenue. McFarland died by suicide while officers were speaking with him.
Jonathan McFarland is the only surviving child. In one afternoon, he lost his mother, his sister, and his brothers. His father was the one responsible.
He stood before hundreds of people at a vigil Tuesday evening at Muscatine High School Stadium and told the crowd he was still struggling to accept what had happened. Ryan Jr.’s baseball teammates sat in the bleachers wearing their jerseys. The Norbert F. Beckey Bridge was lit in purple and gold. The names of all six victims were read aloud.
The Muscatine Community School District confirmed that two of the victims were current students and two were district employees. Counselors were sent to schools across the district on Tuesday morning.
A Young Woman on the Verge of Everything
Those who knew Ryle personally describe someone whose kindness left a lasting impression on nearly everyone she encountered. She had been a student leader with Chi Alpha at the University of Northern Iowa, where the organization remembered her as among the most joyful people they had ever known.
In a public statement, Chi Alpha wrote that she loved others in a way that reflected genuine care and faith, and that they were honored to have walked alongside her.
A childhood friend named Kendall Burger wrote that she had known Ryle since third grade, often playing with her on the bike path near their homes.
She remembered Ryle as one of the few people who made time for her during the years when she felt invisible at school. Drake Edwards, another close friend, wrote that Ryle was the person he turned to when he needed guidance and that losing her felt impossible to process. He called her Forever 20.
Ryan Willis McFarland had a prior criminal record that included a 2012 guilty plea for child endangerment and two felony convictions in 2016 for fraudulent business practices involving odometer tampering.
Criminologists say Monday’s shooting was the sixth mass killing of a family recorded in the United States in 2026. Behind that number is a 20-year-old woman who was weeks away from walking into a classroom full of children for the very first time. Her name was Ryle McFarland.
