Murder of Reena Virk

Epic card · No. 11125

Reena Virk (March 10, 1983 – November 14, 1997) was a 14-year-old Indo-Canadian girl, who was beaten by a group of teenagers and then drowned by two of those teenagers, 14-year-old Kelly Ellard and 16-year-old Warren Glowatski, in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Her status as a victim of bullying prior to her murder attracted substantial media attention in Canada. Eight teenagers were tried and convicted in relation to her death; six involved in the beating received sentences ranging from 60-day conditional sentences to one year in jail, while the two who killed Virk were convicted of second-degree murder and given life sentences. The Globe and Mail commented at the time that her case was "elevated into a national tragedy". A pair of Canadian sociologists have described the case as a watershed moment for a "moral panic" over girl violence by the Canadian public in the late 1990s.

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