METRO VANCOUVER — A woman convicted of torturing and killing animals has been granted limited unescorted time in the community.

Kayla Bourque, 25, will be allowed unsupervised day passes on Thursdays between 9 and 11 a.m., at the discretion of a parole officer, it was decided in Vancouver Provincial Court Thursday.

She will be required to wear a GPS ankle monitor and to provide a detailed itinerary to authorities of what she plans to do with her two hours of unescorted time.

Bourque was designated a high-risk violent offender after her 2009 conviction for killing animals and causing them unnecessary pain.

According to court documents, she told a psychiatrist she dismembered a family dog in 2009, and then a cat the following year.

The same documents also detailed how Bourque told a university classmate she hoped to kill a homeless person and was studying forensics to learn how to evade police.

Following her release, Bourque took up residence in New Westminster and was subject to 47 court-ordered conditions, including a nightly curfew and electronic monitoring.

She appeared in court alongside her lawyer on Thursday to request changes to her current probation conditions that would allow her limited unescorted day passes into the community.

Bourque, dressed in a black, white and grey striped turtleneck sweater and jeans, was quiet as she sat in the courtroom’s back corner, waiting her file to be called.

Both Crown and defence agreed to certain terms, including GPS ankle monitoring. Judge Elisabeth Burgess granted the request.

Bourque’s lawyer Andrew Bonfield called Thursday’s develop just one step in a lengthy rehabilitation process.

“This is just the beginning of a long process, I think, for Ms. Bourque,” he said. “We’re just hoping that it can be really well planned and that at the end of it, she’s that much more independent and adjusted and that things are going well.

“It’s all to further rehabilitation, which is really the purpose of a probation order. It’s to have very limited, as I said, quite well-monitored and planned time where she can be in the community and hopefully establish herself a little bit better.”

Bonfield said his client was eager to work with probation services and that if things go well, there could be plans to make further applications to her probation order at a later date.

In 2013, Bourque lost an appeal of a lifetime ban on owning animals.

with files from The Canadian Press

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