To Suman Virk, the past eight years have seemed more like a horrible dream than reality.
But the worst moment in those eight years -- the moment her 14-year-old daughter Reena's death became very real -- was when she identified the body in a Victoria hospital days after the girl was reported missing.
"That happened in the same place where she was brought into the world," Ms. Virk said, her voice breaking as she addressed convicted killer Kelly Ellard's sentencing hearing. "It was in the morgue where I was let into the room by police officers.
"I had to go into it alone, because she was a murder victim. I was unable to touch her. I could not hold my baby because it would destroy evidence."
No mother should outlive her daughter, and no human being is disposable, she said, adding that Reena suffered unforgivable indignity at the hands of Ms. Ellard, now 22.
In 1997, six girls accused Reena of sleeping with the boyfriend of one of them and swarmed her, punching and kicking. One boy, Warren Glowatski, testified at the trial that he and Ms. Ellard followed the beaten and bloody girl across the bridge, pushed her under the water, and held her head there while they shared a cigarette. Ms. Ellard was 15 at the time.
At Ms. Ellard's first trial in Victoria, she was found guilty, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. The second trial produced a hung jury. In April, at her third trial, she was found guilty of second-degree murder. Ms. Ellard maintains she is innocent.
Over the past two days, the Crown has brought witnesses to attest to Ms. Ellard's violent past in a bid to deny her parole for seven years, the maximum for her life sentence.
From holding a chef's knife to a classmate's throat when she was 13 to inciting a drunk, pregnant woman to attack a bystander in a New Westminster park last year, Ms. Ellard has shown she incorrigibly victimizes the vulnerable, Crown attorney Catherine Murray said.
"Throughout, she has shown a consistent inability to accept the consequences of her actions," she said. "She has a tendency to blame others. She has a tendency towards violence."
One witness, retired RCMP staff sergeant Bruce Brown, produced a drawing of a girl who was a bullying victim of Ms. Ellard and two friends that he had found in her locker. It showed a before-and-after image of the girl with her hair on fire.
That image depicted an incident in January of 1997 in which Ms. Ellard and two friends drew the girl away from the school and punched and kicked her before cutting off her hair and setting fire to it, Mr. Brown said.
"That particular piece of paper stuck out to me because of the violence associated with it," he said.
But of the girls charged in the incident, Ms. Ellard is the only one against whom the assault charges were stayed, said her lawyer, Peter Wilson. The girl under attack never positively identified Ms. Ellard. Until the death of Reena Virk, Ms. Ellard had no criminal record, he said.
Prison correspondence records show that Ms. Ellard associated with four men and women in the prison system and referred to one man, accused of second-degree murder, as her boyfriend.
"Her risk of reoffending is higher if she hangs around with a negative peer group," Ms. Murray said. "These aren't names drawn out of a hat, these are dangerous people she chooses to hang around with."
But Mr. Wilson said it is impossible to judge Ms. Ellard by the company she keeps in prison, because everyone is an offender and she may not know their precise criminal records.