Rest In Peace, Ryan Armstrong

By MICHAEL PERRAULT and JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

WILDOMAR - Emotional parishioners who gathered Sunday morning at Cornerstone Community Church struggled to make sense of the Friday night stabbing death of 22-year-old Ryan Joshua Armstrong, son of the church's founding and senior pastor the Rev. Ron Armstrong.

"There are times when I say, 'God, I don't get it,' " the Rev. Ron Baum, executive pastor, told a standing-room-only crowd gathered among Christmas trees and wreaths at the Wildomar church.

Instead of a joyous post-Christmas celebration that had been planned, churchgoers wept, prayed and sang, vowing to rally around their pastor, his wife Debbie and their other son, Ross.

"I told (Ron) what he has been telling all of us for the last 17 years: It's going to be OK," said Mike Brisson, associate pastor.

Ryan Armstrong was stabbed to death Friday night during a fight outside the ET Sports Lounge on Jefferson Avenue in Temecula.

Riverside County sheriff's detectives identified and were searching for several people at the bar Friday night, but no arrests have been made.

"We've identified several people involved in the stabbing. It's just a matter of locating and questioning them," said Central Homicide Sgt. Dean Spivacke.

Armstrong and his friends had been in the bar for about 45 minutes when the argument started with another group of people around 10 p.m.

As the arguments began to diffuse, Armstrong had reportedly gone to resolve things with the other group when the fight grew physical and spilled out a back door into an alley where Armstrong was stabbed, Spivacke said.

Neither of the groups previously knew each other and there were no gang affiliations, Spivacke said.

Deputies have not said what caused the argument.

"The fight had died down when the victim tried to make peace," Spivacke said, according to witnesses. "That's when they attacked Ryan."

Also stabbed during the altercation was Joel Ross, son of Hugh Ross, a minister at Sierra Madre Congressional Church and president of the Pasadena-based nonprofit international science-faith think tank, Reasons to Believe.

Ross was listed in critical condition but was expected to survive.

Armstrong was a Chapman University student, majoring in public relations and advertising, who was in Murrieta visiting friends and family for the holidays, Baum said.

Brisson was neighbors to the Armstrongs for five years in the mid-1990s, as well as youth pastor. He remembers Ryan Armstrong as a typical rough-and-tumble boy who loved sports, played roller hockey, enjoyed martial arts and wrestled with his brother.

"The thing that always impressed me about Ryan was how he cared about people," Brisson said. "He (grew to be) a very intelligent young man. I guess what is such a shame to me is I really just saw great things for him. He wasn't just a guy going through life. Ryan would have made his mark in the world."