Shortly after 6am last Sunday, Stuart Blanchard was woken by angry voices drifting through his bedroom window. At first, the retired building site manager thought the commotion was caused by a habitually troublesome neighbour. Listening more closely, he realised it was coming from a nearby family home where peace and harmony usually reigned.
One of the voices, that of a man, was unfamiliar to Mr Blanchard. But he recognised the other as that of Joanne Shaw, 35, the mother of a five-year-old son, much liked in the community for her kindly and usually gentle nature.
'I heard Jo shouting 'Get out! Get out! You shouldn't be here!' and her voice was getting louder,' Mr Blanchard, 59, told us. 'Then there was a massive bang – so big that my front door shook, about 50 yards away. It was a weird noise, more muffled than the crack of the explosions you hear on TV, and it was followed by this long, eerie silence. My first thought was that a gas canister had gone up.'
The grimmer truth began to emerge moments later. Alerted by a caller inside the Shaws' house – perhaps Joanne's father, Anthony, or mother, Tracey – and also by a dog-walker who phoned 999 after hearing the row, police officers, some armed, descended on the red-brick estate surrounding a grassy square in Stapleton, on the outskirts of Bristol.
Arriving at the semi at 6.34am – two minutes after the blast, but fully 17 minutes after the first emergency call – they found smoke billowing from the blown-out living room window, and the front garden strewn with glass and brick.
Victim and Perpetrator
Joanne Shaw was murdered by her ex-partner Ryan Kelly when he forced his way into her home and killed them both by detonating an explosive device. Kelly, 41, has been named by police as the man who died in the blast. He was a dangerous drug-gang henchman first jailed at the age of 19 for firebombing a nightclub.
Having reportedly stalked and menaced Joanne for years after their relationship ended – forcing her to move to the safety of her parents' house – Kelly had seemingly decided to end both their lives in a chillingly brutal manner. When he broke into the house, he was carrying a hand grenade. How he obtained it remains a matter of conjecture; some suggest it could have been bought from the dark web, while others claim it came via Army contacts.
As Joanne implored him to leave, he detonated it.
Heroic Last Act
Joanne's young son was bouncing on a trampoline in the back garden during the confrontation, leading neighbours to believe she had deliberately ushered him out of harm's way just before the blast. Friend Jamileh Ravaan exclusively told the Daily Mail how Joanne also managed to 'protect her mother in a selfless last act'. She said: 'She put herself in between the ones she loved and the danger. She's a hero.'
A family statement released on Thursday strongly suggests that this admirable young woman sacrificed herself to save her little boy and her parents. 'Joanne's actions were nothing short of heroic,' the Shaws said. 'She showed extraordinary strength, selflessness, and love in the face of unimaginable fear, placing herself between danger and those she loved. She will always be remembered, not for the violence inflicted on her, but for her bravery, her protective instinct, and the ultimate sacrifice she made for others.'
Police Criticism
The family's poignant words bring an uplifting glimmer to a story that otherwise plumbs the depths of humanity. Yet they leave many hard questions unanswered, some directed at Avon and Somerset Police. Several of Joanne's friends and neighbours told the Daily Mail that she had alerted the police to the danger posed by Kelly many times and claim she was given insufficient protection.
'If you want my opinion, she has been let down,' says a 79-year-old neighbour in whom Joanne confided. 'She told me she'd been having problems [with Kelly] for months, but nobody did anything. She would still be here if somebody had cared for her. This should never have happened.'
Two young women who worked with Joanne in a tanning salon also revealed how they felt the police had let her down. Mr Blanchard described it as 'yet another red flag situation where nothing has been done'. The force has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct 'due to the deaths occurring following previous police contact over domestic incidents'.
Background of Joanne Shaw
Joanne was educated at one of the West Country's most prestigious independent schools, Colston's Collegiate (now the Collegiate School), which charges annual fees of more than £22,000. Her father was its head groundsman, and the family lived in a cottage on the grounds. Headmaster Jeremy McCullough remembered her as 'friendly, enthusiastic' and 'caring and kind to the young ones'. She excelled in art and design.
She later studied law, graphics, and photography at St Brendan's Sixth Form College in Bristol. Her working life included jobs in recruitment, IT, office management, the beauty industry, and most recently working for a relative's high-end watch sales business. A friend said that by her mid-twenties she yearned for a baby, and when her long-term boyfriend insisted he was too young to be a father, she broke off the relationship.
Ryan Kelly's Criminal Past
Kelly's hair-trigger temper and ruthlessness first emerged when he was 19. After getting drunk and vomiting in a Bristol club, he was ejected by a doorman. He returned to hurl a petrol bomb at the building, starting fires that forced 200 people to evacuate. He was jailed for three years for arson.
In 2015, aged 30, he was recruited as a henchman by George Rogers, a jailed career criminal seeking to run a major county lines drug-dealing network from prison. Kelly's first task was to acquire £60,000 worth of cocaine to fund manufacturing equipment, but he was arrested with the stash on the M5 and jailed for five years.
The Relationship and Tragic End
It is believed Kelly took up with Joanne soon after his release. In late summer 2020, her dream of motherhood was fulfilled. A Facebook photo shows her son sleeping in a bouncy chair wearing a white babygrow with the slogan 'I love my Daddy.'
Ms Ravaan described how the relationship went sour. Just last week, Kelly confronted Joanne near her home. 'On the way to see me one morning last week she was late because she said he had cornered her on her road,' Ms Ravaan said. 'She had been breaking up with him – trying to get rid of him for years. That's been ongoing. He wouldn't give her up.'
Kelly would beg for another chance and promise to be better. 'He was abusive in all ways,' Ms Ravaan added. 'She said that just the thought of having to report him again was pointless because she had been ignored in the past. It wasn't good enough. The police didn't do well enough. They failed her and the system continues to fail women.'
But she emphasised: 'I don't want to concentrate on him. I want to concentrate on the fact that Joey's a hero who saved her mum and son.'
Investigation and Motive
A key part of the police investigation will be identifying Kelly's motive. CCTV footage from a neighbour's security camera shows a grey estate car circling the grassy square at 5.24am, just over an hour before the blast, believed to be Kelly conducting a recce. The car was later found abandoned and towed away by police.
If Kelly planned to die and take Joanne with him, why had he signed up to play in a friend's charity football match next Saturday? His older brother, Lee Kelly, said: 'None of us knows why this happened. It's totally incomprehensible.'
Yet when a maniac can sneak into his former partner's home and detonate a grenade despite her repeated pleas for protection, questions cry out to be answered.
