Grieving dad speaks out - HALAYNA SHOULD BE STILL HERE

Losing his daughter and her unborn child to violence has ripped Darren’s family apart

Two minutes before she lost her life, pregnant teenager Halayna Wagstaff desperately tried to escape the vice-like grip of her boyfriend. The 17-year-old, urged by others to take her partner Jason Anaru-Emery home from a party, had already been attacked by him earlier in the evening. He’d grabbed her by her neck and thrown her around a room in front of others.

Now parked up on the main street of Te Puke, the athletic teen made a desperate dash for freedom, opening her car door and running away from the father of her unborn child, only to be caught and dragged back into the front seat.

According to evidence given in the Hamilton High Court, no-one can be sure who was behind the wheel that winter’s night two years ago when the car sped out of the small Bay of Plenty township so fast it shook an oncoming van.

But 90 seconds later it had careened out of control, smashing into a metal guard rail of a bridge on the outskirts of town before going down a bank, only stopping when it hit a concrete power pole. Halayna’s injuries were unsurvivable, her heart bursting the moment her body struck the dashboard.

It’s those last tragic minutes of her life that grieving father Darren Wagstaff, 47, would give anything to have saved his daughter from.

He’s talked to a mate who saw the couple’s car drive erratically along the main road, and even forced himself to watch the gut-wrenching footage of the deadly smash.

“I hit the bottle for three days,” the dad-of-six admits.

Darren is a man with a broken heart, wishing desperately his strong and stubborn middle daughter with a phenomenal smile had confided in him before she paid the ultimate price. In the 18 months following her death, he claims many knew Halayna had suffered at the hands of her boyfriend. And he wishes the abuse she suffered had not been shrouded in secrecy.