A Metro Vancouver woman convicted of brutally butchering family pets has been granted unescorted outings into the community.
Kayla Bourque will be allowed two-hour excursions away from her New Westminster halfway house once a week provided her parole officer consents, a provincial court judge ruled Thursday.
The 26-year-old high-risk offender will also be required to wear a GPS monitoring device.
Bourque has been living under a strict set of 47 parole conditions, and asked a judge to loosen some of them this week. Though her request for outings was approved, allowing her to sometimes leave home from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursdays, another for unsupervised internet access was rejected.
Crown lawyers told the court they support the excursions as a means of letting Bourque demonstrate responsible behaviour, but the Vancouver Humane Society said it would have preferred to see the judge err on the side of caution.
“Her crimes are pretty horrific,” communications director Peter Fricker told CTV News. “She’s obviously still a danger to animals and to the community at large.”
Bourque, a former Simon Fraser University student, pleaded guilty to killing an animal, causing pain and suffering to an animal and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose in 2009.
She was once described by a psychiatrist as an “affectionless psychopath,” and her initial release from custody triggered a public warning. Officials said at the time they were concerned Bourque had demonstrated escalating criminal behaviour.
She admitted to killing a family dog and cat, and allegedly told friends she had fantasized about murdering people.
When she was first arrested and police searched her university residence, officers found graphic images of dismemberment and what they described as a “kill kit,” containing a knife, syringe, restraints, black gloves and a demon mask.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Mi-Jung Lee and files from The Canadian Press
