Authorities confirmed a vehicle found in flames earlier this week was used by two teenagers suspected in the murders of a U.S. woman, her Australian boyfriend and an unidentified third person in British Columbia.
The 2011 Toyota Rav 4 that Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, were last seen driving in northern Saskatchewan was found Monday in the Gillam, Manitoba, area, Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Wednesday.
RCMP officials in Manitoba said there would be an increased police presence in the Gilliam area, with an informational check point set up in Gilliam while McLeod and Schmegelsky remain at large.
McLeod and Schmegelsky were initially considered missing after police found their vehicle and camper on fire about 30 miles south of Dease Lake on Friday. But RCMP officials said Tuesday that the two teenagers are now being investigated as suspects in at least three murders in the rural British Columbia area.
Dease Lake is about 300 miles from where 23-year-old Australian Lucas Fowler and his 24-year-old American girlfriend, Chynna Deese, were found shot dead a week earlier. While investigating the camper and car fire from last week, police found the body of an unidentified man a little over a mile away.
The bodies of Deese and Fowler were found just before 7:20 a.m. on July 15 on Alaska Highway 97 near Liard Hot Springs, a tourist attraction, police said. A blue Chevrolet van the couple was believed to have been traveling in was found at the scene.
The man in the third suspicious death has yet to be identified.
Deese’s brother, British, toldNBC News that the couple met while his sister was working at a hostel in Croatia and that they were both experienced travelers.
“It really must of been something to catch them off guard and some form of just terrible evil that should not exist in this world,” he said. “I just hope they get caught and I hope this never happens to anyone else like this.”
Police previously said that McLeod and Schmegelsky, both of Port Alberni, British Columbia, were traveling to Whitehorse in the Yukon to look for work and had not been in contact with their families for a few days.
RCMP asked for the public to come forward with any tips but warned to keep a distance from the teens as McLeod and Schmegelsky should be considered dangerous.
