‘My dad is dead and can’t help me’ - Kiena's heartbreaking words to police
‘My dad is dead and can’t help me’ were the heartbreaking words by the late Kiena Dawes in an exchange with police in August 2021 before her tragic end.
The 23-year-old Fleetwood hairdresser took her own life on a railway line on July 22, 2022 after leaving behind a written suicide note saying, “Ryan Wellings killed me”.
Tragedy befell the Dawes family years before with the death of her dad in which they never recovered.
Kiena was just 12 years old when her father Russell fell 30 feet from a roof whilst installing an air conditioning system at a fellow villa owner's home near Ayia Napa.
Father of three Russell, 47, who was a keen scuba and sky diver was in a coma for seven weeks in a Nicosia hospital as his wife Angela supported by Kiena and her brother and sister battled to raise £20,000 to fly him back for specialist brain injury treatment in the UK.
This included a televised appeal on UK television.
They returned to their home town of Lytham St Annes but life was never to be the same.
Russell's son Kynan got to know Wellings who in turn started to go out with Kiena.
Acccording to another member of the Dawes family the collapse of the family would never have happened if they had stayed in Cyprus.
They said: "It was their dream and it had come true.
“Russell had a thriving business doding air con ad refrigeration work but all that was lost after his fall and they returned to the UK.
“Russell regained his mobility despite his brain injury and received a lot of help from the brain injury charity Headway but he was not the strong family leader he had been.
Kiena's father died in October 2020 at his home in Gretdale Avenue, St Annes.
In a heartbreaking exchange captured on video with a police officer Kiena can be heard saying she doesn’t have her dad to protect her anymore.
She said: “He (Ryan) knows my dad is dead and can’t help me.”
Less than a year later she would leave her nine-month-old daughter with a friend before taking her own life.
Landscape gardener Wellings from Bispham was cleared of her manslaughter but convicted of assault and coercive and controlling behaviour towards Ms Dawes after a seven-week trial at Preston Crown Court.
He will be sentenced on Thursday.