Matison Dena was 22 and pregnant when she was killed on Interstate 75 in Lexington.
She had stopped at a hotel near Man O’ War Boulevard the night before her death with her husband and young son while attending a revival last year at Asbury College in Wilmore .
But the next morning, she wound up lying on the interstate. She was hit by a truck, dragged, and later died at a hospital.
The incident happened after several chaotic minutes outside the hotel.
Dena had called police to report that a minor was being sexually abused, according to records obtained by the Herald-Leader. Records show she told police the victim was younger than 12, but no other details were available.
Then Dena was alone and acting “erratic” in the parking lot of the Hyatt Hotel, according to a police summary of the incident. She grabbed construction items and smashed a car with them, and she hid in a trash bin when others were around. At one point, she lay in a fetal position in the grass outside the hotel.
She then walked toward the interstate and lay down on the highway, according to security footage from outside the hotel. A woman called 911 to report that Dena was asking to get in people’s cars.
“She is saying she needs help,” the woman told dispatchers. “She got up as soon as I stopped, and she is currently at my passenger-side door.”
More people arrived to help Dena, and the caller told a dispatcher she was going to drive off. But Dena didn’t let go of the woman’s truck.
“Oh, Jesus, she’s holding onto my vehicle,” the caller told dispatchers. “I drove off, and she attempted to clutch to the vehicle, but she just jumped off.”
The truck’s back tires hit Dena, killing her. She had blunt force trauma to her head and back, according to a police summary, and her injuries indicated she’d been dragged.
Seventeen minutes passed between Dena’s call to police and her death that morning, Feb. 19, 2023.
Dena’s death was ruled accidental by the Fayette County Coroner and labeled by police as a non-criminal investigation.
“It is unclear why Mrs. Dena chose to walk into traffic on I-75, or lay down in the roadway, and finally attempt to hold onto a truck as it drove off,” Sgt. James Boyd wrote in his report.
Much of what happened that morning remains a mystery to Dena’s family. They spent more than a year trying to obtain basic details of the incident, but they were stymied at every turn by Kentucky’s open records laws and Lexington police.
A relatively new Kentucky law prohibits nearly all non-residents from obtaining open records. One of the few exceptions is that in the case of a death investigation, the executor of the dead person’s will can obtain records. But Dena’s husband is the executor of her will, the family said, and they haven’t remained in contact with him since her death.
Dena’s husband could not be reached for comment for this story.
So Dena’s family, as Idaho residents, could not obtain information about Dena’s death. They learned the above details only after asking a Herald-Leader reporter to submit records requests on their behalf.
And still, many records requests were denied because of a common practice in Kentucky that allows police to deny records requests when an investigation remains open.
Though the investigation into Dena’s death was closed and ruled accidental, police said it was tied to another investigation — her claim that a child was being sexually abused — and that investigation was ongoing.
Meanwhile, Dena’s family remains desperate for answers. They don’t understand why a woman who seemed to be in good health was in such a crisis that morning, and they want information about the second investigation that remains open.
Dena’s aunt, Billie Jo Boyce, summarized Kentucky’s open records laws like so: “Don’t die there, because your family will never get answers.”
Family left in the dark
Dena and her family were in town from Florida for the revival at Asbury, which lasted two weeks and offered 24-hour services and welcomed people from all over the world.
But what happened between checking into the hotel the night before Dena’s death and her erratic behavior the following morning is largely unknown.
“Police just told us, ‘She was hit by a car, and that is how she died.’ Well, of course, we know that,” Boyce said. “But what led her to be on the interstate in the first place?”
The family’s records requests were denied. But over the past 18 months, the Herald-Leader obtained photographs, witness 911 calls, an autopsy report, video footage, and LPD’s final summary of the investigation.
An autopsy showed no drugs or alcohol in Dena’s system. Boyce said police indicated that Dena likely had poor mental health, and a similar observation was noted in investigative documents obtained by the Herald-Leader.
When Dena last spoke with Boyce and the rest of her family, she was in good spirits. She was not a regular church attendee, Boyce said, but she was inspired by what she saw at the Asbury Revival and looked forward to fostering a deeper spiritual connection.
Dena’s cousin, Rylie Bonds, grew up an only child and remembered Dena as being like a sister. Bonds said she loved her family and her horse, and she yearned to drift from one place to another.
“ Even though she only had a little, she made the most of it,” Bonds said. “I remember she was always traveling around. She would just go on these adventures and pick up and go explore.”
The night of the Asbury Revival was the last time they spoke.
The main question Boyce and the rest of the family want answered is why — why was Dena in such distress that morning?
Until police released some records in June, Boyce was not aware the second investigation was open. Police would not disclose more information about that investigation, and they would not release records to the Herald-Leader.
In response to an open records appeal filed by the Lexington Herald-Leader, Evan Thompson, the senior attorney for Fayette County, said the death was “considerably more involved than a typical traffic accident.”
“Rather, the accident investigation is related to multiple other investigations, including a child abuse investigation and crisis intervention,” Thompson wrote.
Records obstacles
Two primary obstacles kept Dena’s family from obtaining records related to her death: The Kentucky law that requires a person to be a resident of the state to obtain open records, and the police practice in Kentucky of denying records when an investigation is still open.
The first of those obstacles is new, while the other may soon be scrapped.
For most of Kentucky’s history, anyone could obtain open records in Kentucky. But in 2021, the state legislature passed a law that said the state’s open records laws applied only to residents of the commonwealth.
Outcry was swift from opponents who argued it was an “assault on transparency” and would “rip the heart out” of open records law.
The Kentucky Open Government Coalition, which fights to preserve open meetings and records laws in Kentucky, argued it would erect barriers that ignore the fact that “the importance of state government information does not stop at state lines.”
The coalition noted several examples where the residency role would take a human toll: the nonresident seeking information on a suitable nursing home for an aging parent in Kentucky; the nonresident victim of a crime or involved in an automobile accident in Kentucky; the nonresident living just over the Kentucky state line who has a direct interest in local records.
When a Kentucky resident — a Herald-Leader reporter — did submit the records requests, many still remained out of reach.
A request for the complete investigative file into Dena’s death was denied because Lexington’s records custodians said the request was too broad for the department to locate, and some details were too sensitive to release.
The Herald-Leader appealed to the office of Attorney General Russell Coleman. In March, he ruled that police had partially violated the state’s open records laws, and he recommended the file be released.
A month later, police turned over the records — in part. Most of the hotel’s camera footage was blurred out and redacted, while some was not turned over at all.
Police cited a statute that says public records containing information of a personal nature where public disclosure would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
“The release of this 911 call by the deceased would prove to be a substantial unwarranted invasion of personal privacy to her surviving family, as it depicts Ms. Dena’s last recorded words and dramatically reflects her state of crisis,” a response by Lt. Tyson Carroll said. “In addition, Ms. Dena’s account of the alleged criminal activity is extremely personal in nature and one that involves a juvenile victim.”
Although some records were turned over, several of key importance — like the 911 call Dena made moments before her death — remain shielded because of their entanglement with an “ongoing investigation.”
But on Sept. 20, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that police had misinterpreted a state statute for about 50 years, and they should not automatically deny records related to open investigations.
Police must provide a good reason for why fulfilling a records request would hamper their investigation. The case still being open was not enough, the court ruled.
“The General Assembly,” the ruling reads, “does not hide elephants in mouse holes.”
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