Video of victim comforts, pains as family still grapples with loss

On a videotape that Victoria Snelgrove's parents discovered shortly after their daughter was killed, the 21-year-old says that one of her biggest fears was of dying suddenly.

''In a second, you know, my life or somebody close to me's life could just be taken away, " says Snelgrove, sitting in her bedroom and staring into the camera. ''So I try to take every opportunity and do everything and appreciate everything, even though it's hard sometimes."

The tape made by Victoria, along with mournful remarks from family and friends, was released in the form of a DVD by the Snelgroves' attorney yesterday, allowing the public a glimpse of the family's loss.

Rick and Dianne Snelgrove have for months avoided speaking publicly about their daughter, an Emerson College senior who died after being struck in the face last year by one of the pepper pellets fired by police into raucous crowds outside Fenway Park.

Again yesterday, as police officials announced a $5 million settlement, the family chose not to speak publicly and did not return phone calls.

But the parents authorized their lawyer, Patrick Jones, to release copies of the DVD.

''This was just so devastating," Rick Snelgrove says in the recording. ''I will never forget the telephone call. I will never forget walking into the hospital and them telling us there was no hope.

''There was absolutely no hope," he says, breaking into tears with his wife at his side. ''I felt so bad because she could always come to me and I'd always fix whatever problem. But I couldn't fix this. It was so hard, just holding her hand. We were watching Torie fade away."

Snelgrove's father says on the DVD that discovering a videotape of his daughter in her bedroom was a gift; he had longed to see her move and hear her voice again. Her mother says that for her the experience of watching the DVD was nearly unbearable.

''I have a very hard time watching that tape because all I want to do is hold her," she says, her voice breaking. ''To watch her is not enough for me."

''She was everything to me," she says at another point in the recording. ''She was my best friend. She was my daughter. She was my confidante. She was the light of our life. She was so precious to us, and when she died that light went out."

In Victoria Snelgrove's video, she sits on her bed and talks passionately into the camera about her loving relationship with her family and friends, her desire to become a broadcast journalist, and how safe she and her best friends, Sara Johnson and Kristen Daniels, had felt in the world.

''We always talk about the little bubble that we were in, you know, that our lives were so good, that we haven't been touched by any tragedy or anything, so, we are really lucky," she says.

But she and her childhood friends were beginning to realize something about the fragility of life, she says, and that the bubble that protected them could burst. Her aunt's recent death from brain cancer was one of the events leading her to that conclusion, she says.

Still, Snelgrove, wearing her hair pulled back from her face, smiled. She talked about her father, who ''has no clue what's going with me at all," she said. ''But that's OK, he tries."

Her mother is pretty much her best friend, she says. She says that her brother Michael is a family man but that she envisioned something different for herself.

Making a similar point in another portion of the family's DVD recording, Snelgrove's friend Daniels recalls a night when she and Snelgrove were 16. They had gone to a park, where they had looked up at the stars and made wishes. Daniels says she had wished for a certain boy to like her, but Snelgrove rhapsodized about a career in journalism.

''Torie went on for five minutes about how she wanted to be on E! Entertainment television, and be Jules Asner and be famous and how she was going to meet entertainment people on the red carpet," Daniels says, wiping away tears.

''Torie always knew what she wanted," she said. ''She had her goals set, and she was going to achieve it."

In her video, Snelgrove says broadcast journalism was her passion, and that a boyfriend, marriage, and children would wait.

''I want to have a career," she says firmly. ''Someday I want to have a family, but at least not anytime soon.

''All I want to do . . . I want to pursue the broadcast journalism thing. I want to really do it. I want to be successful in it, and I really want to prove to people that I can do it because I don't think anybody thinks they can do it."

Her words and vision for herself affected the way people saw her, her brother notes in the video. In recent years, he had begun thinking of his sister as more of a friend than a sibling.

The family DVD begins with Victoria's friend Kaitlyn Sachetta holding up a photo of her and Snelgrove smiling inside the Tiki Lounge restaurant in the Fenway the night of the tragedy.

It ends with Snelgrove grappling with life's uncertainty.

''I have absolutely no clue who I am. Hopefully, soon enough things will begin to make sense," she said.

''I'm still young, I still have time."