They had been together for two-and-a-half years and were about to start a family.
But Leah Galvin could do nothing as the man she loved, and the father of her unborn baby, was murdered in front of her.
Billy, 21, would never get the chance to watch his child take their first steps, say their first words or walk them to their first day at school.
This chance was taken away by David Connors, 24, who on Monday, July 15.
David Connors' brother Peter was unanimously found not guilty of murder and manslaughter.
Ms Galvin was a prosecution witness, giving her evidence from behind a screen during the trial at Manchester Crown Court .
She was a key witness, being one of the few people to have been there when Billy died.
"He was just a bubbly, chatty guy. He had a dead good personality," Ms Galvin said of Billy's character.
"Billy did have two sides to him - he had a heart of gold but he did have an angry side to him as well. He was no angel, he had his tantrums and he was a little fighter - he would not bow down.
"But he had a heart of gold. He would give you his last pound if he had it. He had the most kindest heart deep down."
On the night Billy was murdered in December 2018, a person Ms Galvin described as 'small in figure, dressed in black and with a hood up' emerged from the van armed with a weapon she believed was a knife.
It was David Connors, who had a crowbar in his hand. A tool he had used as a petty thief stealing tools turned into a murder weapon.
Before Ms Galvin knew it, Billy was on the floor, seriously injured.
She heard the person say in panicked, high tones: "I have killed him Ricky, I have killed him."
After hearing something had happened, another friend, Andrew Naylor, went to the scene.
"Leah was hysterical, Dillon was white, there was blood everywhere," he told the jury.
Before her eyes, Billy was cruelly taken away and robbed of the chance of becoming a father.
