Found Asleep Beside Her Body, Now Free in B.C.

A hotel cleaner had to shake him awake. Ryan Friesen was asleep on the floor of a laundry room at the Grand Sunset Princess Hotel, beside the beaten body of his 23-year-old girlfriend, Kiara Agnew.²¹⁵

They had come to Playa del Carmen, on Mexico's Riviera Maya, to celebrate what should have been her 24th birthday. Agnew, born in New Brunswick and raised from her teens in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, had travelled south with Friesen for an all-inclusive week in early March 2023.²³ Surveillance showed the couple leaving the hotel bar around midnight. What prosecutors say happened next, in the hours before dawn on March 3, 2023, is what three levels of Mexican courts have now fought over for three years.²⁴

Friesen later told family he went back to the room, argued with Agnew, fell asleep, woke around 2:30 a.m. to screaming, and followed the sound to the laundry room, where he said other people were present and Agnew told him she had been raped.²¹⁵ That account did not survive the later appellate finding. He was arrested on the spot and charged with femicide, the charge Mexican law uses when a woman's killing meets criteria such as a history of violence in the relationship.²⁴

In September 2024, a judge-only trial in Quintana Roo found Friesen not guilty and he came home to Dawson Creek.¹²¹⁴ Mexican prosecutors appealed, and in December 2025 a single appellate judge reversed the acquittal and entered a guilty verdict on the femicide charge, without re-hearing witnesses, according to the defence.⁴³ The family was told through Global Affairs Canada in January 2026, the same month the case broke publicly, close to three years after the killing.³⁶

The reversal rested on three pillars: the absence of other suspects, injuries consistent with a beating, and Agnew's diary and family testimony documenting a history of intimate-partner violence against her.²¹⁵ Prosecutors also pointed to injuries to Friesen's hands, knuckles and knees, a bite mark, swollen fists, and victim blood and tissue reported on his body, an account the defence disputes in its mechanics.²¹⁵

The defence case rests on a different reading of the body. Expert evidence argued the beating had been so severe it may have required more than one attacker.²¹⁵ DNA recovered from under Agnew's fingernails did not match Friesen and included at least one profile belonging to an unknown male, a point an independent Canadian forensic review of one report later confirmed for CTV's W5.²¹⁵ Friesen maintains his innocence through counsel, citing that DNA among other grounds.³¹⁵

Friesen and some relatives also advanced the theory that the resort owed a criminal tax and that Agnew was killed as an act of cartel retaliation.¹⁷²¹ A Sinaloa Cartel source interviewed by W5 repeated a version of it, but Mexican prosecutors rejected it and kept Friesen as the only suspect.¹⁷² A former girlfriend, Keyana McNeil, told W5 she had experienced choking, beating and isolation from him, and the same pattern of falling asleep after the violence.¹⁶² A 2018 assault charge involving her was dropped and a no-contact order was issued in 2019.²¹⁵

Agnew's own family is divided. Some relatives who reviewed additional file material say they no longer believe Friesen is responsible, while others, including her aunt Tanya Agnew, reject that view.²⁵² That split has played out in public as protests and petitions have grown in the Peace Country, with demonstrators in Dawson Creek and Fort St. John calling for the guilty verdict to be recognized and enforced.¹¹³²

With Friesen declared guilty, his lawyers filed an amparo directo, a constitutional challenge, before a three-judge panel of a federal Collegiate Circuit Court in Mexico.²¹⁵ The panel is reviewing due process, the presumption of innocence, the forensic and DNA evidence, and whether the appellate judge's reasoning was adequate.²¹⁵ As of this week there is no announced decision date; those following the case say a ruling could come any day.⁹²⁷

No sentence has been imposed. Because Friesen is in Canada and the conviction is on appeal, he has not been returned to Mexico for sentencing, and sentencing would follow only if the conviction is ultimately upheld.²²⁶ Under that statute a femicide conviction carries 50 to 80 years in prison, with coverage of the case commonly citing up to 50 years.²¹⁵

Mexico is not currently seeking his extradition or return for sentencing. Officials typically wait for the foreign process to conclude, which means that if the conviction is upheld, an extradition process to return him to Mexico for sentencing, where he could face up to roughly 50 years or more, would then begin.²⁶² Global Affairs Canada has said it is aware of the overturned verdict but that extradition is a matter of international cooperation, and that no Canadian jurisdiction applies to the offence committed in Mexico.²²⁶

In Dawson Creek, Friesen faces no Canadian bail, house arrest, curfew, or electronic monitoring tied to the Mexican case.²⁶² The RCMP in Dawson Creek said earlier they had not been notified of any arrest request.²²⁶ Relatives and protesters say his daily life has changed little; he has been described as still able to play hockey as a free man.²⁷¹¹ Canada's default rule is that crimes committed abroad are not prosecuted here unless a specific Criminal Code exception applies, and no such proceeding has been reported.³³² A Change.org petition demanding he not remain free has roughly 5,600 signatures.¹¹³⁷

The case has pushed a legislative response, though not yet a law. On April 17, 2026, Edmonton Manning MP Ziad Aboultaif presented petition e-7071 in the House of Commons, Kiara's Law, initiated by Agnew's aunt.²⁸²⁹ It would assert Canadian criminal jurisdiction over a Canadian who harms another Canadian abroad, require Canadian forensic autopsies in suspicious deaths of Canadians abroad, and strengthen consular advocacy for families.³⁰³¹ It is not in force.²⁸³³

For now the end of the story is the federal panel's ruling. If it upholds the femicide conviction, the question becomes when and how Mexico brings Friesen back to serve a sentence that could stretch decades. If it does not, the acquittal could effectively return.²⁶⁹ Until then, the man convicted of killing his girlfriend in a Mexican resort laundry room remains free in the town where she grew up, waiting on a decision nobody can date.²⁷¹⁵