July 26: Canadian police were using drones and dogs to scour harsh terrain in northern Manitoba on Thursday in the search for two teenagers wanted in the killings of three people, including an American woman and her Australian boyfriend.
Late on Wednesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charged Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, with the second-degree murder of Leonard Dyck, 64, a botany professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
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The pair were originally reported as missing last Friday but were later described as suspects in the killing of Chynna Deese, 24, of Charlotte, North Carolina, and her boyfriend, Lucas Fowler, 23, of Sydney, Australia.
The Globe and Mail reported that Schmegelsky and McLeod had been linked to social media accounts and chatrooms promoting far-right-wing ideology and communism, including on YouTube and Steam, a video-game distribution platform.
The RCMP said on Thursday that the pair were last seen on Monday in the Gillam, Manitoba, area, over 1,000 km (620 miles) north of Winnipeg, and about 3,000 km (1,865 miles) from the crime scenes in British Columbia.
“This is very challenging terrain, this is a large area, there’s a lot of dense bush, swampy areas,” Julie Courchaine, media relations officer for the RCMP, told a news conference. “The police officers that are up there are trained for these types of situations.”
