Oct 25, 2007 6:04 pm US/Central
Friends, Neighbors React To Ryan's Prison Sentence
Relatives, friends and neighbors in George Ryan's hometown of Kankakee spoke out Thursday evening about the former governor's impending prison sentence.
As CBS 2's Mike Parker reports, for five hours after the decision was announced, there was no sign of Ryan at his home. No one was answering the door. Then at 1:50 pm Ryan and his wife, Lura Lynn, came out, got into a sport-utility vehicle and were spirited away to an undisclosed location. They said nothing about prison staring him in the face.
It was the first time Ryan has been seen by news cameras in a month. In September he and his wife were at a Springfield book signing where Lura Lynn Ryan said, "our consciences are clear."
"Maybe my dad will have a statement later in the week. I don't know," the former governor's son, George Ryan Jr., said outside the family's home Thursday. "But that's where it's at so you guys can all go home."
The sentencing decision made the front page of a late edition of the local paper, the "Daily Journal." It is the talk of Ryan's hometown.
A neighbor who lives just down the block from the Ryans says his impending prison sentence is a tragedy. She says Ryan and his wife helped her family get through the recent death of their daughter.
"Frankly I don't think that anything that's gone against Gov. Ryan isn't anything that hasn't happened in politics for a long, long time," neighbor Virginia Gordon said. "But this was time that he got caught up in it."
There was less sympathy at the neighborhood barbershop
"I hate to see a man of his age go to jail, anybody of that age go to jail, but it's not the place for them," Kankakee resident Tom Carroll said. "But I guess the people have spoken he had his day in court."
Another man had no sympathy for Ryan whatsoever. He said his grandson was murdered by a man who was later freed from death row by Ryan.
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