ABBOTSFORD – A two-member parole board deadlocked Wednesday on whether to allow convicted killer Kelly Ellard to temporarily leave prison to take her baby into the community.
After questioning Ellard for two hours at a hearing at the Fraser Valley Institution this morning, board members Kim Polowek and Catherine Dawson said they couldn’t agree on her request for up to five escorted temporary absences for 90 days.
Parole Board spokesman Patrick Storey said afterwards it was rare for board members to be deadlocked. He said a new panel with two new members would hear Ellard’s case again in a few weeks.
Ellard cried as she described how her new baby had changed her life for the better. She feels confident and has more hope for the future, she said.
She also cried when she described looking at the bloody face of her victim, Reena Virk, who she admitted she rolled unconscious into the water one November night in 1997.
Last May, another parole board panel denied Ellard day parole, but accepted that she showed remorse for murdering the 14-year-old Virk under a Victoria bridge.
Postmedia News revealed in October that Ellard was eight months pregnant after being allowed conjugal visits with her criminal boyfriend Darwin Dorozan, who’s since been sent back to prison.
Ellard had three trials before she was convicted of second-degree murder in 2005 for beating and drowning Virk. Virk was just 14.
Ellard was first found guilty in 2000, but the B.C. Court of Appeal ordered a new trial. The second time around, the jury couldn’t reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared.
Though she was 15 when she killed Virk, Ellard was raised to adult court and was sentenced to life with no hope of parole for seven years.
Last May, the Parole Board of Canada denied Ellard day parole, saying that while she was finally admitting some responsibility for Virk’s death, there was “ongoing minimization” of her crime.
And the two board members told Ellard that they were concerned about her admitted drug use inside prison, as well as “your lack of insight into why you committed the murder and your sense of entitlement with respect to parole.”
The ruling made reference to Ellard‘s relationship with her baby’s father Darwin Dorozan, though he wasn’t named.
“You have family support and the support of your boyfriend,” the board members said. “Your boyfriend is a federal parolee but in community assessment No. 6 he is assessed by (the Correctional Service of Canada) as a positive source of support.”
The parole board did note the progress that Ellard has made in recent years in jail – quitting her drug habit, improving her education and working in the prison’s library.
kbolan@postmedia.com
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