Kaylee-Jayde Priest was a three-year-old girl from Solihull, England, who died in August 2020 while in the care of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. This is a chronological account of the case.
Kaylee-Jayde Priest was born in 2017. Her mother, Nicola Priest, raised her in the Birmingham area of England. Little detail about Kaylee-Jayde’s earliest years has been made public. Those who knew her later described her, in court, as a “happy child.”
At the time, Nicola Priest was an active user of TikTok, a video-sharing app that grew especially popular in 2020, when many people spent more time online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She often posted about her daily life on the platform.
In mid-2019, Nicola Priest moved into a two-bedroom flat on Stonebridge Crescent in Kingshurst, a neighborhood in Solihull. Solihull is a town in the West Midlands region of England, close to the city of Birmingham. She lived there with Kaylee-Jayde.
Neighbors in the building later told a court that from the time Priest moved in, they heard her shouting at her daughter “with real regularity.” They recalled specific phrases, such as telling the child to be quiet or to leave her alone.
According to their accounts, they did not recall hearing anything kind directed at the child. These accounts became part of the evidence prosecutors used to describe the home environment Kaylee-Jayde was living in during this period.
At some point before the summer of 2020, Nicola Priest began a relationship with a young man named Callum Redfern, who lived in Dudley, a town near Birmingham.
Prosecutors later described the two as being romantically and sexually involved with one another. Redfern did not live at the flat, but he spent a significant amount of time there. In court, Redfern was described as the more controlling figure of the two in the relationship.
As the relationship continued, text messages exchanged between Priest and Redfern showed growing hostility toward Kaylee-Jayde. On 24 July 2020, roughly two weeks before her death, Priest sent Redfern a message that included the words, “I’m gonna kill her.”
She went on to explain that her daughter kept leaving the living room and wandering into the kitchen, and she admitted to smacking the child over a soiled diaper. Redfern replied immediately, telling Priest, “Good – give her one from me.”
Three days later, he messaged her again, saying that he intended to keep the child away from him and that he was tired of dealing with her.
Prosecutors said these messages, along with several others, painted a picture of the uncaring attitude both defendants held toward the child.
Investigators who worked on the case concluded that the physical discipline Kaylee-Jayde received from her mother and from Redfern had grown more forceful and more violent as the relationship went on.
Court testimony described occasions on which Priest struck Kaylee-Jayde around the head and referred to her using derogatory language. Neighbors said they had heard the child crying in a tone they described as fearful.
On one occasion, neighbors recalled hearing a loud bang followed by the sound of Kaylee-Jayde crying, after which they believed they heard her mother remark that she would tell people the child had simply fallen out of bed.
A post-mortem examination, a medical procedure carried out to determine a person’s cause of death, was performed after Kaylee-Jayde died. It found a total of 68 injuries on her small body.
Most of these had been caused around the time of her death, but some dated back roughly two months earlier. These older injuries included broken ribs, a fractured sternum, and fractures to her lower legs.
Doctors were able to estimate the age of these older fractures by examining how much healing had already taken place in the bone. These findings were later presented to the jury by forensic medical experts during the trial.
Investigators determined that the older injuries could only have occurred while Kaylee-Jayde was in the care of Priest and Redfern.
On 7 August 2020, two days before Kaylee-Jayde was found dead, security cameras recorded her leaving her home with her mother to visit a local shop. Footage also showed the pair using the lift in their apartment building that day.
Throughout the recordings, Priest did not hold her daughter’s hand and largely ignored her during the outing. When the pair returned to the flat, Kaylee-Jayde still appeared to be walking, talking, and moving as she normally would.
The following evening, 8 August 2020, Redfern came to the flat. Priest’s other child, a baby boy, was staying with his father that weekend, which meant Priest, Redfern, and Kaylee-Jayde were alone together.
Kaylee-Jayde was reported to be in good health when Redfern arrived. At some point that evening, she became sick and vomited, and her bedding had to be changed as a result.
Prosecutors told the court that Kaylee-Jayde had been put to bed and began crying, interrupting plans Priest and Redfern had to be intimate that night.
The prosecution’s case at trial was that Kaylee-Jayde suffered a serious assault sometime that night, while she was alone with both defendants, which caused severe injuries to her chest and abdomen.
Priest later testified that she woke at around 10:30 a.m. the next morning, 9 August 2020, and found Kaylee-Jayde lying on her side.
She moved her daughter onto the floor and dialed 999, the emergency telephone number used across the United Kingdom, telling the operator that her daughter was not breathing. An ambulance crew reached the flat at 11:17 a.m.
The technician who responded, Caitlin Harper, told jurors that Priest was sitting on the bed in a distressed state and had cried out, “I don’t think she is alive.”
Ms Harper also described the condition of Kaylee-Jayde’s bedroom, saying the mattress had no sheet, the duvet had no cover, there were no pillows, no carpet, and the light did not work.
She told the court she had noticed pooling blood on one side of the child’s torso, along with clusters of bruising elsewhere on her body. By the time paramedics arrived, Kaylee-Jayde was already dead.
A later medical examination found she had suffered a torn intestine, a fractured rib, and a deflated lung. Medical experts compared the severity of her injuries to those a child might sustain after being struck by a car traveling 40 miles per hour, or after falling roughly 30 feet onto concrete.
West Midlands Police, the force responsible for the area, launched an investigation and brought both Priest and Redfern in for questioning. Both denied any wrongdoing.
When investigators asked Priest who she believed was responsible for her daughter’s death, she gave a one-word answer: “Cal.” Redfern, in turn, placed the blame on Priest. Neither admitted to causing Kaylee-Jayde’s injuries.
Nicola Priest, then 22, and Callum Redfern, then 21, were formally charged with murder, along with an alternative charge of manslaughter.
Priest was also charged with child cruelty, and both defendants faced a further charge of causing or allowing the death of a child, covering the period between 12 June and 3 August 2020.
This time frame lined up with the window in which Kaylee-Jayde’s older, partially healed injuries were believed to have occurred. Both defendants pleaded not guilty to every charge against them.
Their trial opened in the summer of 2021 at Birmingham Crown Court, where serious criminal cases from the region are heard, and lasted several weeks.
The prosecution’s case was presented by Andrew Smith, a Queen’s Counsel, meaning a senior barrister appointed to represent the Crown in court.
He told jurors that Kaylee-Jayde’s death had been caused by a prolonged, deliberate attack that took place while both defendants were alone with her, and that by the time Priest dialed 999 for an ambulance, her daughter was already dead.
During the trial, Priest testified that she did not call for help right away because she was frightened.
She told jurors she had heard several smacks coming from Kaylee-Jayde’s bedroom the night before her death, and said that when she found her daughter unresponsive the next morning, she dropped to the floor and began screaming.
Her defense lawyer, George Carter-Stephenson, asked her why she had waited before dialing 999, and she said she had not known how to describe what she was seeing. Redfern chose not to testify in his own defense during the trial.
Throughout the proceedings, Priest and Redfern each blamed the other for Kaylee-Jayde’s death. Priest’s legal team argued that Redfern was responsible for the abuse. Redfern’s legal team argued that Priest, as the child’s primary caregiver, bore responsibility instead.
After hearing all the evidence, the jury cleared both defendants of murder. However, the jury found both Priest and Redfern guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Under English law, a murder conviction requires proof that a defendant intended to kill or cause serious harm, while a manslaughter conviction does not require that same level of proof of intent.
Priest was additionally found guilty of child cruelty, a charge connected to Kaylee-Jayde’s older, partially healed injuries. Redfern was cleared of that specific charge.
The case against both defendants had relied heavily on CCTV footage, witness testimony, and evidence from several medical experts.
Following the verdicts, Wendy Bounds of the Crown Prosecution Service said Kaylee-Jayde’s life had been “cruelly cut short by a violent assault” that took place inside her own home.
Sentencing took place on 6 August 2021 at Birmingham Crown Court, before Mr Justice Foxton. Priest, by then 23, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for manslaughter, along with a concurrent three-year sentence for child cruelty.
A concurrent sentence is served at the same time as another sentence, rather than being added on afterward. Redfern, by then 22, received 14 years for manslaughter. Combined, their sentences totaled 29 years.
The judge told Priest that she “did nothing to seek medical help” for her daughter, and said a prompt phone call could have saved Kaylee-Jayde’s life.
He said both defendants had lied repeatedly during their police interviews, and that Priest had also lied while giving evidence at trial. The judge added that he believed it was Priest who had caused the fracture to her daughter’s sternum.
Following the verdicts, Kaylee-Jayde’s grandmother, Debbie Windmill, released a statement through police. She said, “I could never stop staring at the smile on her beautiful face.”
She also described how she had been looking forward to buying her granddaughter’s first school uniform, an experience she said had been taken from her in a deeply painful way.
She added that every child deserves the chance to grow up and said her granddaughter would always be remembered by her family. Detective Inspector Adam Jobson, who led the investigation, said he “cannot imagine for one second what Kaylee-Jayde’s family must be going through.”
He added that investigators believed they would likely never know the complete details of what happened inside the flat that night, since neither Priest nor Redfern had accepted full responsibility for their actions.
In the weeks after Kaylee-Jayde’s death, and well before the trial took place, Nicola Priest continued posting videos on TikTok. Some appeared to be tributes to her daughter.
One video, posted on 17 September 2020, roughly five weeks after Kaylee-Jayde was found dead, showed Priest mouthing along to a song about having made a serious mistake.
The clip was filmed using a filter that brightened her teeth, and its caption apologized to her own parents. In a separate post, she shared photographs of Kaylee-Jayde alongside flowers that had been left near their home, writing that she loved and missed her daughter.
During this same period, she also continued to post dance videos and makeup tutorials. Once these posts became widely known following the trial, they drew significant public criticism in the United Kingdom and beyond.
An online petition later circulated calling for Priest and Redfern to receive longer prison sentences, gathering signatures from members of the public who felt the manslaughter convictions did not reflect the severity of what had happened to Kaylee-Jayde.
In the years that followed, videos discussing the case continued to circulate on TikTok, the same platform Priest had once used, and collectively drew hundreds of millions of views.
Parole is a process that can allow a prisoner to be released before completing a full sentence, under specific conditions set by authorities. As of 2024, court records showed that Priest could become eligible for parole as early as April 2030.
At that time, both she and Redfern remained in prison. The case received extensive coverage from British news outlets at the time of the trial and sentencing, and continued to attract public attention in the years afterward.
