July 29 (UPI) — The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has asked residents of a rural Manitoba town to stay inside and keep doors and windows locked as officers search the area for two teenagers suspected of killing three people.
In an update Sunday, RCMP Manitoba said officers had been dispatched to the community of York Landing after it had received a tip that 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky were in the area.
“All efforts are being made in York Landing to apprehend two individuals matching the description of the suspects,” RCMP Manitoba said on Twitter. “The safety of the community members is our priority. We remind residents to stay inside and check all doors and windows to ensure they are closed and locked.”
York Landing is about 125 miles southwest of Gillam, Manitoba, where the RCMP had concentrated its search efforts for the pair over the last week.
On Saturday, RCMP reported it had received more than 200 tips in five days but had recorded no new sightings of the teens as officers searched over 100 empty houses and several large abandoned buildings in the Gillam area. The Royal Canadian Air Force also dispatched personnel and a CC-130H Hercules military transport aircraft to the town to assist with the aerial search.
However, the mission expanded to York Landing, a community with fewer than 450 people, after police received information the teens were spotted at a native community’s landfill.
Leroy Constant, the York Factory Cree Nation chief, told his community to stay indoors as helicopter, dog and Emergency Response teams will be in the area until further notice as the teens were supposedly seen at their landfill.
“We are urging everyone to remain indoors with windows and doors locked,” he said on Facebook. “Patrols of the community will be done on a 24-hour basis.”
McLeod and Schmegelsky were charged last Wednesday with one count of second-degree murder for the death of Leonard Dyck, whose body was found July 19 at a highway pullout in British Columbia, a mile away from where their car was found.
The teens are also suspected of killing 24-year-old American woman Chynna Noelle Deese and her Australian 23-year-old boyfriend Lucas Robertson Fowler who were found shot to death beside their blue Chevrolet mini-van July 15 about 300 miles from where Dyck was discovered days later.
