The daughter of Indian immigrants, Reena Virk had always felt like an outsider in her predominantly white Canadian community.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Reena Virk had always felt like an outsider in her predominantly white Canadian community. When her family arrived in British Columbia, they also converted to the Jehovah's Witnesses faith, making them "a minority within a minority." Virk hated her parents' strict rules and made several attempts to run away from home — in part motivated by her desperate desire to fit in at school, where she suffered constant bullying for being different. And eventually, that bullying turned deadly. On November 14, 1997, a mob of teens cornered Virk and accused her of spreading rumors and trying to steal one of the girl's boyfriends. Then, they brutally beat her and drowned her in the nearby Gorge Waterway.