Mounties in manhunt for stab spree fugitives
POLICE were last night scouring an area of Canada nearly half the size of Europe for two suspected killers after ten people were knifed to death.
Danger alerts were sent to all mobile phones in the neighbouring provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta as part of the manhunt for Damien Sanderson, 31, and Myles Sanderson, 30.
The pair are considered armed and dangerous after the stabbings, which also left 18 people injured.
The incident is one of the worst of its kind in Canadian history. Prime minister Justin Trudeau called it ‘horrific and heartbreaking’.
The attackers are thought to have gone door to door stabbing people in two remote indigenous villages in Saskatchewan.
Some are thought to have been targeted, while others were randomly knifed. Locals pointed the finger at the influx of drugs.
Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Chief Bobby Cameron lamented ‘ the unspeakable violence that claimed the lives of innocent people’. He blamed ‘ harmful illegal drugs [ that] invade our communities’.
The last public sighting of the suspects was in Regina, provincial capital of Saskatchewan. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned on Twitter: ‘Do not leave a secure location. DO NOT APPROACH suspicious persons. Do not pick up hitchhikers.’ The carnage began early on Sunday morning at the James Smith Cree Nation, an indigenous community of 1,800 people in Saskatchewan, when a caller phoned police to report a stabbing. More calls flooded in reporting stabbings,
and police found victims in 13 locations in the Cree Nation and Weldon, a nearby village.
Last May, a Saskatchewan wanted list included Myles Sanda erson, writing that he was ‘unlawfully at large’. His relationship to Damien Sanderson is unclear.
Among the dead was Lana Head,
mother of two. Her former partner Michael Brett Burns said: ‘It’s sick how jail time, drugs and alcohol can destroy many lives.’
In Weldon a victim’s friend, Ruby Works, said: ‘No one in this town is ever going to sleep again.’
In May, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, visited the James Smith Cree Nation to apologise for the Anglican church’s role in running schools that took indigenous children from their parents in the 1800s and 1900s.
‘No one is going to sleep again’