Killer teens found dead in bush
Trump meets shooting victims but visit marred by protests
THE bodies of teen killers Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were found in dense bush yesterday, ending one of Canada’s biggest manhunts and bringing some closure for their victims’ families.
More than a thousand police and military had combed the wilderness of Northern Manitoba for the past two weeks, using heatseeking technology aboard air force planes and police choppers to search for signs of life, and responding to hundreds of tips, thousands of kilometres apart, as spooked Canadians thought they had seen the pair.
In the end, the fugitives wanted for the murders of Australian backpacker Lucas Fowler, his American girlfriend Chynna Deese and Canadian botanist Leonard Dyck, were found 8km from where they ditched their stolen car on July 22. Police are yet to reveal the cause of their deaths.
Sheila Deese, mother of Ms Deese, said she was “torn” after hearing the news.
Ms Deese said the reason her daughter and Mr Fowler were killed may now never be told, and the deaths of McLeod and Schmegelsky would not change the reality.
“I was really torn as to wanting them alive or not,” she said. “This current news does not change my outcome.
“I remain broken for my family and the Fowler family.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they found the bodies of McLeod, 19, and Schmegelsky, 18, in bush near the Nelson River and the small town of Gillam, Manitoba, ending a 15-day manhunt spanning 5000km and three Canadian provinces.
They had dubbed the pair “little Houdinis” after they disappeared a fortnight ago.
RCMP assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy said she was confident the bodies were theirs, but an autopsy would confirm the identities.
The remains were last night carried in metal coffins by boat, truck and then plane to the provincial capital of Winnipeg.
Ms MacLatchy said the bodies were found by a specialised RCMP group that had been searching in tough terrain after finding the pair’s belongings near a dented tin runabout at the Nelson River.
Mr Fowler, 23, son of NSW chief inspector Stephen Fowler, and Ms Deese, 24, were found shot dead and left in a ditch by a highway on July 15.
Mr Dyck was discovered four days later.
President Donald Trump and wife Melania chat to a survivor in Dayton, Ohio.
DONALD Trump has consoled victims of the US’s latest mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, but despite promising a message of unity, he continued to rail at opponents while facing protests that his rhetoric on race has fuelled extremism.
The US President flew to El Paso, Texas, where a selfdeclared white supremacist murdered 22 people last weekend at a Walmart popular with Hispanic customers.
Mr Trump spent about an hour-and-a-half at a hospital with staff and victims before he and his wife Melania were driven to the city’s emergency operations centre to meet with police officers.
Protesters gathered in the streets, watched by armed police. “Go home. You are NOT welcome here!” and “Trump hatred, racism not welcome here” read two of the signs. Similar scenes unfolded at a stop in Dayton, Ohio, the site of a shooting in which nine people died.
Pro-Trump demonstrators also took to the streets in both cities, illustrating the sense of division in the country ahead of next year’s election.
Even so, Mr Trump said he had an “amazing day”. Then after praising the “heroes” who confronted the killers, he reignited his feud with opponents who accuse him of racism and who had argued against him visiting Ohio or Texas.
“They shouldn’t be politicking today,” Mr Trump said.
Apparently stung by the less-than-enthusiastic reception given to him by some leaders in both cities, Mr Trump also insisted he had been treated warmly.
“The love, the respect for the office of the presidency, it was ... I wish you could be there to see it,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino tweeted that the president had been treated like a “rock star” in the Dayton hospital.
In Dayton, Mr Trump told shooting survivors “you had God watching. I want you to know we’re with you all the way”.
Leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gave a speech on Wednesday accusing Mr Trump of fanning “the flames of white supremacy.” And Trump, who’d begun the day at the White House by insisting that his rhetoric “brings people together,” went on Twitter from Air Force One to respond.
“Watching Sleepy Joe Biden making a speech. Sooo Boring!” Mr Trump wrote.
The undignified political titfor-tat came as it emerged that one of the victims of the Ohio carnage, mother-of-two Lois Oglesby, 27, Facetimed her family as she lay dying.
“She Facetimed me and said: ‘Babe, I just got shot in my head, I need to get to my kids’,” partner Daryl Lee said.
“She was letting me know she loved me and to take care of these kids, and I got you babe. I can’t stop crying.”
Demonstrators protest against Trump's visit.