‘I still wonder about Ryan’

Mar 7 2008 by Joanne Douglas, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

“I ALWAYS wonder if I could have done more to help Ryan.”

Those are the heart-wrenching words of Michelle White, who helped to save the life of Donna Hawkins after she was repeatedly stabbed by her father Christopher.

Hawkins was jailed for at least 21 years on Wednesday for killing four-year-old Ryan minutes after stabbing Donna 13 times.

It was the efforts of Ms White and shopkeeper Waqar Zaman who saved Donna from bleeding to death.

Both say they did what anyone else would have done and welcomed the sentence Hawkins received.

Ms White, 36, said: “I am pleased with the outcome; I hope he’s locked up for life.

“This sentence can’t bring Ryan back though, which is the thing we all want most.”

Mr Zaman, 34, said: “He deserves that sentence. I hope he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.

“They shouldn’t let him out after what he did to Donna and Ryan.”

Ms White, whose daughters knew Donna and her elder sister, Natalie, went to help the teenager after hearing her own daughter screaming.

She found Donna lying on the pavement outside her father’s Royd Street home, bleeding heavily.

She said: “I heard my daughter screaming and ran over to where I saw Donna laid out on the floor. She was covered in blood.

“I’m not medically trained. I didn’t know what to do, but I asked Waqar for his T-shirt and put it on her tummy to stop the bleeding.

“I could see she had been stabbed a lot, but I focused on the main stab wound, the one which was bleeding the most.

“I really didn’t think she would survive.

“It was so difficult at the time. I wanted to stay with Donna but then I knew Ryan was there on his own, too.

“It was awful. I didn’t know what to do.

“I always wonder if I could have done more to help Ryan, even though now I know I couldn’t have. It’s not nice to have that on your conscience.”

The court heard that Donna would have died had it not been for the first aid she received from Michelle and Waqar.

Ms White added: “I feel so sorry for all the family. Nothing we can do or say can make it better, but I am glad that we helped Donna the way we did.

“I just wish I could have done the same for Ryan.”

Mr Zaman ran to help Ms White when he saw her battling to save Donna.

He said: “She was lying there covered in blood and saying she wanted to go to sleep. Then she said ‘my dad stabbed me’ and she kept saying ‘he’s going to kill him’.

“I knew she meant Ryan, but by then there was nothing we could do to help him. I really wished there was because we would have done it.

“I stayed with Donna. She knew me and Michelle and I think it was good for her to have us around.

“I was telling her to keep talking to me to try and keep her with us until the ambulance arrived, which took about 15 minutes.

“People may say we saved her life, but all we did was go to help her.

“I think we did what anybody else would have done.

“I just feel so sad and sorry that we couldn’t do anything for the little boy.”