Teens’ suicide mission
CANADIAN authorities believe teenage fugitives Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky took their own lives after finding two guns beside their bodies in thick scrub last week.
They are now examining the guns to see if they were the same weapons used to shoot dead Australian tourist Lucas Fowler, his US girlfriend Chynna Deese and botanist Leonard Dyck.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police yesterday announced it had completed autopsies on two bodies found near Gillam, in northern Canada. The autopsy confirmed the bodies were McLeod, 19, and Schmegelsky, 18, who led Canadian authorities on a three-week manhunt for more than 3000km from British Columbia to Gillam, Manitoba.
The RCMP confirmed the two fugitives died “in what appears to be suicides”.
“While both individuals were deceased for a number of days before they were found, the exact time and date of their deaths are not known,” the RCMP said. “However, there are strong indications that they had been alive for a few days since last seen in July and during the extensive search efforts in the Gillam area.”
Mr Fowler, 23, from Sydney, and Ms Deese, 24, from North Carolina were found dead on the side of a British Columbia highway on July 15 after their van broke down.
A few days later Mr Dyck was found dead on another BC highway and his Toyota RAV4 was stolen by the teenagers and driven to Gillam.
The teenagers became suspects and the manhunt ended last week when the RCMP found McLeod and Schmegelsky dead in the Gillam scrub.
“Police can also confirm that two firearms were also located with the two deceased males and forensic analysis is under way in order to definitively confirm that these weapons are connected with the northern BC homicide investigations,” the RCMP said.
“The Manitoba RCMP have completed their search of the area where the two male bodies were discovered, approximately 8km from where Mr Dyck’s burnt RAV4 was located on July 22, 2019.
“The Manitoba Medical Examiner has completed the autopsies and confirmed that the two deceased men located in Manitoba on August 7, 2019 were Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky.”