A man accused of driving his vulnerable partner to suicide through domestic abuse and violence went on a prosecco and cocaine binge after being charged with her manslaughter, he told a jury.
Ryan Wellings, 30, said he left the police station after being accused of being responsible for the death of Kiena Dawes, 23, took cocaine and downed prosecco before recording and uploading a video to Facebook, Preston Crown Court heard.
In the video, he blamed Miss Dawes’ mother for her daughter’s death and called her a ‘f****** s**g’.
Wellings is on trial for the manslaughter of Miss Dawes, who left a suicide note saying, ‘I was murdered… Ryan Wellings killed me.’
She left their eight-month-old daughter with a friend before taking her own life on a railway line on July 22, 2022.
Wellings, a landscape gardener, of Bispham, Lancashire, also denies assault and coercive and controlling behaviour between January 2020 and July 2022.
The trial has previously heard how Miss Dawes was ‘worn down’ by two-and-a-half years of domestic violence.Â
He was asked about the short video he made within an hour of leaving the police station, on June 3 last year, after being charged with Miss Dawes’ manslaughter.
The clip, with loud backing music, showed him being driven in a car, wearing sunglasses and holding a bottle, saying: ‘I’m driving around with a bottle of prosecco.
‘I have been told off an hour ago on a manslaughter charge. It’s all f****** s***.
‘Angela Dawes (Kiena’s mother), you need to take the blame for abandoning your daughter and going to Greece.
‘You are a f****** s**g.’
Paul Greaney KC, prosecuting, asked Wellings in the witness box: ‘You uploaded it on purpose to intimidate the Dawes family and show them who is boss.
‘What we see there is the real Ryan Wellings. Ryan Wellings the bully.
‘The entitled person. The person who thinks he can do what he wants to people and say what he wants.’
Wellings replied: ‘I did not know what I was doing. I know I did wrong and did some stupid things. That’s me hurting. Being blamed for killing my kid’s mum, the woman I loved.’
The defendant said he was sleep-deprived and had downed bottles of prosecco and taken drugs at the time but maintained he uploaded the video to Facebook by accident and later deleted it.
