Murdered victim remembered as a ‘beautiful girl’
The latest sex-trade worker to be slain and discarded on the outskirts of Edmonton is being remembered as a beautiful girl who lost her way after falling into drugs.
Brianna Torvalson, 21, was found murdered in a Strathcona County driveway on Thursday, after working as a prostitute for two years to fuel her drug addiction.
Requesting privacy, her family released a statement yesterday:
“Brianna Torvalson’s family would like the public to know that she was NOT a discarded, forgotten street person but rather a loving, caring, beautiful, irreplaceable soul.”
Torvalson spent a lot of time around the Fort Road area near the Transit Hotel where many around there knew the 21-year-old, including bar patron Cory Vanderbilt.
“I knew her since about two years ago when she was a beautiful young girl. Then she met the wrong people and fell into bad habits and when I saw her last week she looked about 90 years old,” Vanderbilt told Metro outside of the Transit Hotel.
Vanderbilt said Torvalson gave in to her dark side, using drugs and prostitution as a way of life, doing anything to get money.
“I think the drugs took over her life. She was lying, stealing and prostituting. The owners of the Transit Hotel banned her from the property, and if you can’t come to a place like this you must be pretty bad,” he added.
An Edmonton childhood friend of Torvalson’s though spoke of her fondly and said the young girl had a bright future at one time.
“I knew her as a bright young girl with a wide open future and it is a tragic ending that didn’t need to be,” Patrick Wight told Metro.
“I would hear about her periodically and every time worse than the last.
“I know that she become heavily involved with drugs and even her family had not heard from her in some time,” he added.
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