Reena Virk’s parents said Wednesday they wanted Kelly Ellard to take full responsibility for murdering their daughter when she applied for day parole, which she was granted this morning.
Under the conditional day parole, Ellard will be released directly to a residential substance-abuse treatment program. After six months, the parole board will review the decision.
Manjit and Suman Virk said that it’s important for them to hear Ellard admit that she pushed Reena down in the water of the Gorge waterway and put her foot on Reena’s head, letting go when Reena stopped breathing.
It was the final, fatal act of a beating that began when Warren Glowatksi, Ellard and six other girls swarmed Reena under the Craigflower Bridge on the evening of Nov. 14, 1997.
After the beating, Ellard and Glowatski, then 15 and 16, respectively, followed Reena as she limped across the bridge. Glowatski has testified that they continued to beat Reena, then Ellard held Reena’s head under water until she drowned.
At a hearing before the parole board in February, Ellard denied beating Reena on the other side of the bridge, but she agreed that Reena would be alive today if it had not been for her actions that night.
The Virks want more than that — they want Ellard to stop minimizing her involvement in their daughter’s death.
“She has to take full responsibility and say: ‘Yes, I did that. I’m sorry.’ Then some relief will come to her. Until then, she is playing games,” Manjit Virk said. “I believe that freedom should come with responsibility.”
If Ellard accepts her part in Reena’s death, the board can rightfully give her day parole, he said.
“If she denies that, she’s lengthening her pain and the system is getting frustrated. It’s been a long 20 years now, and she hasn’t totally admitted her part.”
Virk’s face lights up at the mention of Glowatski, who was convicted of second-degree murder and released on full parole in 2010 after participating in a restorative justice program with Reena’s family.
“Look at the difference between him and her. He repented for what he did.”
Ellard, 35, applied for day parole for the first time in May 2016. Her application was denied because of concerns regarding recent drug use, her minimization of the offence, her lack of insight into why she committed the murder and her sense of entitlement with respect to the parole board.
In February, Ellard successfully applied for escorted temporary absences from the Fraser Valley institution where she lives with her infant son.
“She is a mother herself now,” Virk said. “And if she wants the best for her child, she has to look back 20 years and see what she did to somebody else’s child. She has to think about it and, hopefully, do the right thing.”
The Virks said they will be satisfied if Ellard takes full responsibility for her crime today.
“She will be deserving of some kind of respect from society. She will set a good example, that if you have done something, accept it and move on. … Society is not able to accept her denial,” Virk said.
If Ellard is granted day parole, he hopes that she keeps herself clean, accepts the rules and becomes a useful member of -society.
Reena would be 34 now.
Twenty years after her death, her family remembers a loving daughter.
“It’s a huge loss,” Virk said. “We see [Ellard] having kids now. She’s alive. Her parents know she is alive. Our daughter is gone forever and she had dreams. We wanted her to grow up, too. She would have been a successful member of society. But the chance of her life has been snatched by this horrible act.”
Her family believes she could have become a nurse or teacher.
“Reena really loved children and looked after her younger brother like a baby,” Virk said.
“She loved kids and she loved life.”
