Two teens wanted in three deaths in Canada
Two armed teens, including one whose father says is on a “suicide mission,” were the targets of a nationwide manhunt Thursday in Canada and have been charged with murder in the death of a motorist along a highway in British Columbia.
Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, are charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, whose body was found last Friday near the suspects’ burned-out camper.
“We continue to ask the public to remain vigilant for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky and consider them to be armed and dangerous,” the British Columbia Royal Canadian Mounted police said. “The two may be using a different vehicle, on foot or even traveling separately.”
The two friends also are suspects in the grisly slaying four days earlier of two tourists along the Alaska Highway.
The two have been spotted on surveillance cameras in a grocery store in northern Saskatchewan, CTV reports. Canadian police have set up roadblocks around the remote Manitoba town of Gillam, near where a car driven by the two teens was found on fire Monday.
There is only one road in and out of the Gillam, a town of about 1,000 people. Mayor Dwayne Forman described the region as “all swamp, heavy trees” and sometimes visited by polar bears, the CBC reported.
Schmegelsky’s father, Alan, told the Canadian Press on Wednesday that he fears his son is on a “suicide mission.”
“He wants his hurt to end,” he said. “They’re going to go out in a blaze of glory. Trust me on this. That’s what they’re going to do.”
Schmegelsky said his son’s main influences were video games and YouTube. “A normal child doesn’t travel across the country killing people. A child in some very serious pain does.”
In a statement Wednesday, Kam McLeod’s father, Keith, described his son as “a kind, considerate and caring young man” who has “always been concerned about other people’s feelings,” the Toronto Star reported.
The pair purportedly left to look for work in Whitehorse in the Yukon. They were at first treated as missing after not checking in with relatives for several days. They became suspects after the discovery last week of the bodies of Chynna Deese, 24, an American, and Lucas Fowler, 23, an Australian, who were shot along the highway.
Four days later, Dyck’s body was found near Dease Lake in British Columbia.