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His daughter Nickyla Saunders described her father as a “kind-hearted man who helped the wrong person.” She recalled “a man that would move mountains for me at any costs he could.” She remembers when she and her sisters misbehaved as children that her dad could barely bring himself to punish them.

“We would just hug him and say, ‘I love you Daddy’ and he would give in,” she said. “He was so sensitive to his girls.”

Saunders told his daughter every day that he loved her. “He was an amazing father to me,” Nickyla Saunders said.

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Dabene, who previously dated Saunders and will now face charges in his death, knows well the reality of having a loved one killed. Dabene’s father, just a few years older than Saunders, was beaten to death in 2009.

Kenneth Dabene, 52, had been scrounging empty beer cans from Bluesfest for cigarette money that July. He had struck up a conversation with another man. The two started drinking but ended up arguing before the man attacked Kenneth Dabene. He was found unconscious, in a pool of his own blood at the foot of the Prince of Wales bridge by a passerby and taken to hospital with blunt trauma to his head, suffering from a broken jaw and severe brain injuries. His family took him off life support days later.

At the time of his death, Dabene’s father had been living with her.

When her father’s killer was first set to appear in court, Dabene told this newspaper that she had to be there to see the man’s face.

“I want to show him that there are people there who cared for my dad … I want to see that this guy gets what he deserves.”