The 5 heartbreaking missed possibilities to avoid wasting Kiena Dawes from her drill-wielding ‘torturer’ boyfriend… after her closing message informed the world ‘I used to be murdered’

On a July morning in 2022, Kiena Dawes drove to her friend’s house and let herself in.

She was carrying her nine-month-old daughter in a car seat, which she carefully placed on the floor alongside her mobile phone.

Then the 23-year-old got back in her car and drove off alone.

An hour and a half later, Kiena was dead, having lain down on the West Coast Main Line in front of a train travelling at 110mph.

In the intervening time, the alarm had been raised by her friend who, after finishing a shower, came downstairs to find the baby and the phone – on which Kiena had written a suicide note.

‘No, no, no’, she could be heard wailing in despair as she rushed outside to try to find Kiena.

Family members were alerted, as were Lancashire police. All in vain.

It’s hard to imagine the anguish that drove this devoted and popular young mother to abandon her child and cut short her life in this way.

But in the message she left, Kiena tried her best to explain.

Entitled ‘The End’, it read: ‘I fought hard, I fought long. I went through pain no one could imagine. I was murdered. Slowly. They tortured me, till there was nothing left. I lost my fight but I didn’t give up my battle.

‘Ryan Wellings killed me. He ruined every bit of strength I had left. I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t ask for it. I hope my life saves another by police services acting faster. Don’t let bullies live free. They don’t deserve it. Make sure the person who is tortured is heard. Let them have a voice.’

And in death, if not life, Kiena finally was heard.

Because, yesterday, Ryan Wellings, her ex-boyfriend, was found guilty of assaulting her and of controlling and coercive behaviour.

The 30-year-old had also been accused of manslaughter – the prosecution claimed his abuse drove her to take her own life – but he was cleared of that charge.

Much of the detail that secured his convictions was contained in thousands of messages written by Kiena, as well as in statements she had given to police before she died.

During a six-week trial, Preston Crown Court heard how the hard-drinking, cocaine-snorting body-builder went from professing undying love to his girlfriend to physically and mentally breaking her.

He punched and kicked Kiena, tried to drown her by holding her head in a baby bath and threatened to ‘drill her teeth out’.

When she spoke of ending their two-and-a-half-year relationship Wellings warned her that he would throw acid in her face ‘like Katie Piper’ – the TV presenter who was attacked with acid by her ex and an accomplice – so nobody else would want her.

But this isn’t just a story about one man’s ‘monstrous’ behaviour.

Tragically, it once again shines a light on how such behaviour continues to go unchecked, even when apparent to all around. It was something Kiena alluded to in her suicide note.

In the 12 months before she killed herself, she called police no less than five times either to report that she had been assaulted or give details of the domestic abuse she had suffered.

On four of the occasions, she was visited by officers at her home. Twice she had visible injuries, including a black eye when she was six months pregnant.

But Kiena was so scared of Wellings that it was only when he brutally assaulted her in front of their baby, 11 days before she died, that she finally backed efforts to prosecute him.

Even then, police failed to support her as they might have, granting Wellings bail and then failing to lock him up when he apparently breached his bail conditions.

‘I was in hospital longer than he was in the cells,’ she would write in a message shortly before she killed herself.

That Kiena was a troubled soul there can be no doubt.

From the age of 13 she had suffered from mental health problems and had on a number of occasions attempted suicide.

She was later diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, which resulted in increased impulsivity, poor self-esteem and difficulty in relationships. In other words, she was a vulnerable young woman.

In January 2020 she was introduced to Wellings, a friend of her brother Kynan.

The relationship quickly became intense, with Kiena, a hairdresser, swept off her feet in what she saw as a ‘fairytale romance’.

Within a week, her new boyfriend had her name inked across his neck and a portrait of her face on the back of his leg.

But Wellings was no tattooed Prince Charming.

Raised in Blackpool, he had struggled with the ‘classroom side’ of a college course in painting and decorating before working in a warehouse and then becoming a landscape gardener.

Drink and drugs featured large in his life. He would spend up to £400 a day on cocaine binges and also took steroids to bulk up his body.

It meant his violent temper was never far from the surface.

In 2019 he attacked his then-partner, Kayleigh Anderson, following a two-day coke and booze session with an uncle.

Having picked him up in her car, Wellings called Ms Anderson a ‘bitch’ before striking the back of her head.

He then grabbed the steering wheel and when the vehicle came to a stop hurled a wheelie bin through the windscreen before ripping off the wing mirrors and number plates.

He admitted battery against Ms Anderson, with whom he has twin girls, and after Kiena’s death would be convicted of punching a friend in the face following a drinking session.

It wasn’t long into his new relationship with Kiena that Wellings’ true colours shone through.

During the Covid lockdown of Spring 2020 she travelled to stay with a friend in Dorset.

Wellings followed her, proposing to her on the beach holding a banner that read: ‘Will you marry me, baby?’

Kiena accepted and in May that year they moved into a property on the south coast.

Within weeks, a jealous Wellings attacked Kiena after demanding to look through her mobile phone.

‘Kiena explained that he got really angry and threw her on the table and tried to strangle her with an iPhone charger,’ the friend told the court.

Details of the attack, like many others, were corroborated by thousands of messages exchanged between the pair.

Having moved back to Blackpool, in July 2020, Kiena’s father died suddenly. She had been devoted to him and the loss hit her hard.

Indeed, when she fell pregnant with Wellings’ baby she felt like it was ‘godsend from my dad’.

But it also meant that she stopped taking medication for her mental health condition, which deteriorated and which Wellings then exploited.

‘The emotional abuse was on a daily basis,’ she would recall in a witness statement given to police at a later date.

‘He would talk to other women on social media and was cheating.

‘[He] would call me names like am I a psychopath and a freak. He kept telling me I would talk to myself and I would have my baby taken off of me.’

Hospital treatment followed but as soon as she was released the abuse began again.

Attempts to end the relationship came to nothing. When she kicked him out for cheating, her fiancé’s friends threatened to torch her car. Wellings even updated his Facebook profile to a photo showing him smiling and holding a lighter.

In July 2021, when six months pregnant, Kiena called police after he gave her a black eye.

‘He was telling me that if I continued I would get our baby taken away from us as soon as it was born and that this would all be my fault,’ she said.

‘On police arrival Ryan’s attitude changed and he put on an act, he was very pleasant. I told police it was just a verbal argument because I was scared about our baby and losing Ryan.’

That October, their daughter was born – not that fatherhood moderated Wellings’ behaviour.

‘It wasn’t long till he was hurting me again,’ she wrote. ‘I started to get hit around the head every week now even if it’s just a slap. But he’s made me believe that’s acceptable because I argue back with him.’

By the start of 2022 things had escalated further still. Phone notes made by Kiena – she disguised them as shopping lists – recorded how Wellings threatened to throw her father’s ashes out of the window and worse.

‘He got a drill turned on and put it in my face and told me he would drill the teeth out of my mouth,’ she wrote.

She noted down comments he had made to her, including: ‘You are a fat little f***’, ‘I stink of childbirth’ and ‘your mum is a slag’.

Another incident took place in March while Kiena bathed her daughter.

‘Ryan grabbed my head and dunked my head in the water,’ she recalled. ‘This triggered my mental health…I opened the flat window and tried to jump out of it.’

Clearly at her breaking point, four days later Kiena dialled 999 and reported Wellings for domestic violence.

Police attended and the matter was passed on to detectives but Kiena’s resolve wavered, fearful that because of her mental health problems she would not be believed.

Wellings was arrested on suspicion of assault. When interviewed he declined to answer any questions and soon after he was taken back by Kiena.

Although no further action was taken against him, police did install panic alarms at her home after the incident.

But, on July 11, Wellings was arrested again after a row broke out when his fiancée moved a sheet of his sandpaper while vacuuming.

He demanded Kiena return her engagement ring and then threw it out of the window.

With their daughter ‘screaming’ on the sofa, she managed to push Wellings out of the flat, only for him to fling the door open, hitting her and causing her to black out.

Jurors were shown graphic photos of the gashed forehead Kiena sustained, with blood pouring down her face.

Wellings was arrested on suspicion of ABH but was released on bail with conditions which included not contacting Kiena.

However six days later she received a call from his former partner, Ms Anderson.

Having called the number back, Kiena dialled 999 saying Wellings had been on the other end ‘threatening her’. She was told – wrongly, it seems – that the call did not amount to a breach of his bail conditions.

Police also advised her to delete a Facebook post she made the following day featuring images of her injuries and spelling out the abuse that preceded it – even though it did not name Wellings.

It meant Kiena was ‘left feeling unsupported by the police,’ prosecutor Paul Greaney KC told jurors.

It was the prosecution case that the assault had been the final straw that ‘broke’ Kiena and was a ‘significant factor’ in her decision to take her own life just days later.

Wellings was not charged until June last year but when he was the charges not only included assault and controlling and coercive behaviour but manslaughter as well, for which he has been cleared.

It was only the second time the charge has been brought in such circumstances.

In 2017, Nicholas Allen, from Stafford, became the first person to be jailed for manslaughter after his ex-girlfriend killed herself as a ‘direct result’ of his controlling behaviour.

But Allen admitted the offence – Wellings’ case was the first to go to trial.

Wellings reacted badly to the charge, telling police: ‘You need to do your homework.’

On leaving the police station he downed prosecco, snorted cocaine and then uploaded a video to Facebook, blaming Kiena’s mother for her daughter’s death.

In his defence it was claimed that Kiena’s descriptions of his behaviour were either inaccurate, untrue or exaggerated.

The court was told that she was a ‘troubled’ woman, whose decision to kill herself was the result of ‘multiple factors’ that included counselling in school, diagnosis of anxiety and depression, alcohol misuse, self-harm and admissions to hospitals.

Giving evidence, Wellings maintained he never intentionally hit Kiena and that any injuries were a result of him ‘restraining’ her as she attacked him.

As the not guilty verdict was read out to the manslaughter charge, members of Kiena’s family were in tears.

As Wellings was led to the cells he smiled, blew his current girlfriend a kiss and gave a thumbs up gesture. The judge adjourned proceedings until sentencing on Thursday

The fallout from the case has been far-reaching for all involved.

Following Kiena’s death, Lancashire Constabulary referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) over its handling of the case and the contact they had with her.

The police watchdog later announced that it found one officer had a case to answer for gross misconduct and two officers had a case to answer for misconduct relating to actions or omissions connected to the victim’s reports of domestic abuse.

Meanwhile, in February 2023, Kiena’s older sister Leona Dawes was arrested for drunkenly arming herself with two knives in a bid to stage a revenge attack on Wellings.

On arriving at the house where he was staying, she kicked the door and demanded he come out. When Wellings did, a scuffle broke out and police were called.

Wellings claimed Ms Dawes had told him: ‘I am going to kill you.’ She later admitted affray and carrying two knives and was given a suspended prison sentence.

But the last word must go to Kiena.

In the suicide note, her final thoughts were for her daughter.

‘Please can the world protect her,’ she wrote. ‘Make sure she is safe. She is loved. She is heard and she doesn’t ever experience any of the pain I have. I’m so sorry I had to go.

‘I tried my hardest to stay with you, to keep you safe from these monsters. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t protect you because they are allowed to live, speak, lie…I am going to miss you so much…Good night and I am sorry.’

– For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org or visit https://www.thecalmzone.net/get-support