“He would do anything in his power to make you smile. If you were in the worst mood you were in the harder he would try,” said Paul.
That all changed in the early morning of November 1st 2015.
Ryan was walking along a stretch of road near the CMU campus, back to his residence hall with a group of friends.
“About quarter after two we got the knock on the door and I looked at who it was and I told him oh my gosh don’t even,” said Julie.
“I opened the door and they asked if we were the parents of Ryan Tsastos and I said something like is someone in jail is anybody hurt and they said can we come in and that’s when I noticed the chaplain was with them,” recalled Paul.
Paul and Julie lost their older son Darryl in a crash just months earlier.
Friends say Ryan died a hero, pushing a girl out of the way of the oncoming car before it hit him.
Tips began coming in to State Police shortly after, they believe the vehicle that hit Ryan has a dark metallic blue color and likely had damage on the passenger side.
Paul and Julie also traveled to Mount Pleasant shortly after the hit and run to make a direct appeal for tips.
But six years later, the case remains open.
“I never thought it would be six years and we still don’t have anything. Graduating from college, his friends are all getting engaged, that’s really hard, going to weddings is torture, we want to go, we’re happy to go and we’re glad we’re included but you can’t help going while you’re sitting at this wedding going, Ryan was supposed to be there. And grandkids, some of the friends are actually having kids and it’s like oh, ok, that’s another hit in the face we’ll never experience,” said Paul and Julie.
This is the time of year that’s the hardest for Paul and Julie.
“As you see I don’t have a tree, I can’t do a tree because our tree and I’m going to cry, we used to do it together, it was an all-day thing and all the ornaments were their ornaments,” said Julie.
And they believe someone out there knows something that could finally help solve their son’s case.
“Someone knows something, I do believe that 100 percent. Someone knows something and how that person can even live with their conscious knowing they know something and stay quiet or they don’t want to come forward because they’re afraid. To me there’s nothing to be afraid of just say what you know and just let everything take place if they can put all the pieces together. You know someone knows. The person who did this, there’s no possible way they’ve kept this to themselves for six years,” said Paul and Julie.
If you have any information about who may have hit and killed Ryan, call Michigan State Police in Mount Pleasant, at .
You can also submit tip anonymously through .
They’re also offering up to a $10,000 cash reward for information that helps solve the case.
And you can listen to David’s extended interviews with Ryan’s parents on the .
