Reena Virk’s grandfather said he won’t be upset if the Parole Board of Canada grants Kelly Ellard day parole when she appears before the board on Thursday.
Mukand Pallan said he wishes Ellard and the baby boy she gave birth to in prison last year “all the luck.”
“I think she has served a long time,” Pallan, 87, said Monday from his home in Victoria. “She shouldn’t have stayed this long, if she had admitted right in the beginning.”
Ellard is serving a life sentence for the second-degree murder of 14-year-old Reena in November 1997. Ellard, now 35, has spent more than half of her life in prison. She was 15 when she and six other girls and her co-accused, Warren Glowatski, 16, swarmed Reena under the Craigflower Bridge.
After she was beaten, Reena limped across the bridge, followed by Ellard and Glowatski. The pair continued the beating on the shore of the Gorge Waterway. Prosecutors said Ellard held Reena’s head underwater until she drowned.
Ellard was convicted of second-degree murder in 2000, but the decision was overturned on appeal. Her second trial ended in a hung jury. In 2005, a third jury found her guilty, but that conviction was also overturned on appeal. In 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada reinstated her conviction for second-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for seven years.
Glowatski was convicted of second-degree murder and released on full parole in 2010 after participating in a restorative justice program with Reena’s parents, Suman and Manjit Virk.
Ellard accepted responsibility for her part in Reena’s death when she applied for day parole for the first time in May 2016. At that hearing, she admitted to parole board members that if she hadn’t participated in the attack, Reena would probably be alive today.
When a board member asked who was responsible for Reena’s death, Ellard replied: “I believe I am.”
She was denied parole at that hearing.
Later that year, after conjugal visits with her boyfriend, Darwin Dorozan, Ellard gave birth to a son. Dorozan, who had been in prison for break and enters, had his parole revoked after officials became aware he is a “person of interest” in the May 2016 disappearance of a drug dealer.
The baby lives with Ellard at the Fraser Valley Institute in Abbotsford. In February, the parole board granted Ellard escorted temporary absences to take the baby to medical appointments and attend parenting classes.
Pallan said he won’t be attending the parole hearing. He doubts that Reena’s mother, who has been unwell recently, will be able to go.
“She didn’t admit it. That’s why I was mad all the time,” Pallan said of Ellard. “I don’t know how she thought she could get away with it with so many witnesses.”
Now, he wishes her luck.
“I feel very sorry for the little kid she had in the jail. He will know he was born in jail. That’s not very good,” said Pallan. “It’s also hard for her parents. They’re very nice people and I know them. They’ve suffered a lot, too, and they shouldn’t have.”
Suman and Manjit Virk could not be reached for comment.
