Scars left by B.C. teens will never vanish for many

The hunt for two suspected teenage killers that led police across several thousand kilometres of northwestern Canada is over.

The pain and fear unleashed by Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod are not. Nor are the haunting questions their actions leave us with.

To be sure, a collective sigh of relief went up on Wednesday with the news that the RCMP was “confident” it had found the bodies of these two troubled young men in a remote wilderness area of northern Manitoba. And no wonder.

For weeks, people had been on edge from British Columbia to Manitoba after the pair, who had disappeared, were charged with second-degree murder in the death of university lecturer Leonard Dyck, and named as suspects in the fatal shootings of American Chynna Deese and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler.

In mid-July, the three victims were found in two different northern B.C. locations and from there police eventually tracked 18-year-old Schmegelsky and 19year-old McLeod across Alberta and Saskatchewan, then finally to Gillam, Man., west of Hudson Bay.

But for weeks, no one could find the childhood friends. And for weeks, the shaken residents of Gillam wondered if their lives might also be at risk.

And so there will be relief in Gillam and its neighbouring communities. And praise for those who helped in the search, police and civilians alike, for persevering in such a rugged, unforgiving environment.

But this doesn’t close the book on a Canadian tragedy. The lives of the families and friends of the victims in three countries have been forever scarred. Their loved ones died terrible deaths.

The men suspected of killing them will never explain their actions. If responsible, they will never be held accountable. There will be no closure for the victims’ loved ones. The families of the two, dead teens will also have been damaged irrevocably.

Meanwhile, public relief will soon turn to public questioning. There will be reasonable queries about the search and, quite likely, why it lasted so long. On July 22, band constables with Tataskweyak Cree Nation at Split Lake in northern Manitoba stopped the car in which Schmegelsky and McLeod were travelling. The officers searched the car and, despite noticing the two young men seemed tense, let them proceed.

A day later, the RCMP named Schmegelsky and McLeod as suspects in the three deaths and released photographs of the men and a grey 2011 Toyota RAV4 they may have been driving. But even before that, the teens must have been individuals of interest to the RCMP.

It’s premature to say there should have been a nationwide alert about Schmegelsky and McLeod before July 22. However, it’s hard not to speculate that if one had been issued, the fugitives could have been captured alive, sparing the residents of isolated communities from avoidable panic. If there was a communications breakdown, the public should know so future police manhunts don’t repeat the mistake.

The public also has a right to know everything the police investigation uncovers about the three slayings in northern B.C. This is no time for the RCMP to be so tight-lipped. Knowledge could enhance public safety.

So many recent, seemingly random acts of mass murder in the U.S. as well as Canada have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by disaffected young males. Perhaps if we learn what seems to have gone so wrong with Schmegelsky — who had a Nazi fixation — and McLeod we could prevent other members of this demographic from becoming hostile and violent.

Until that happens, this isn’t really over.