BOSTON -- The father of a Leominster High School graduate slain over the weekend said police could have stopped his daughter's accused killer.

Alvin Notice, of Gardner, Mass., is mourning the loss of his daughter Tiana, 25.

Tiana was killed Saturday in Connecticut, where she had graduated from the University of Hartford in 2006 with a communications degree. Her father said she was only a few credits shy of earning her Master's degree.

"He stabbed her directly in the heart twice. Stabbed her in the back once. Stabbed her in the chest twice," her distraught father said.

Police arrested her former boyfriend, James Carter II of Bloomfield, Conn., in connection with the slaying.

Her father said Carter had been harassing Tiana and she had filed a restraining order against him about a month ago.

"Her tires were slashed. Notes were dropped at her door. E-mails were sent," Notice said.

"She wanted him to leave her alone so she took a restraining order out. Unbeknownst to me that he was actually beating her up," her father said.

The restraining orders, however, were no better than pieces of paper, Notice said. In the last days of her life, he said, she was continually harassed. She went to police complaining about it, but they did nothing, he said.

"The female comes to you and she says, 'These are the following things that I have to show you.' Going into the weekend, there's no reason why they couldn't pick him up," he said.

They didn't pick him up until after she was found stabbed to death on the back deck of her Plainville, Conn., apartment Saturday night.

"He wanted to make a statement: 'You're going to be my Valentine forever. And if I can't have you, nobody will,'" Notice said.

Carter, 28, is being held on $2 million bond.