Teen fugitives were stopped by police but let go as Lucas Fowler’s top cop dad starts personal search
The teen fugitives wanted for the murders of Sydney tourist Lucas Fowler and his girlfriend Chynna Deese were actually stopped by Canadian police, but were let go.
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The two teenage fugitives wanted in connection to the murder of Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese accidentally slipped through the police net, it’s been revealed.
Nathan Neckoway, a local representative of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation at Split Lake, Manitoba, told Global News in Canada police stopped suspected killers Kam McLeod and Bryer Schemgelsky, as they drove through the Manitoba reserve of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation, about 169km from the town of Gillam.
Neckoway said the pair was stopped during a routine check for alcohol in the dry community. The band constables reportedly didn’t find anything amiss and let the pair go.
“We weren’t aware of their status, of them being wanted,” Neckoway said.
“Apparently after they came to our community that’s when they sent out that wanted (status).”
Band Constables act as a “first responder” and do “front line policing” in remote communities before a member of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) arrives.
The RCMP would not comment on Neckoway’s comments.
It comes as the RCMP confirmed a search of York Landing where the alleged thrill killers were last seen found no trace, almost 24 hours after the sighting.
“After a thorough and exhaustive search, #rcmpmb has not been able to substantiate the tip in York Landing. RCMP resources will continue to be in the York Landing & Gillam areas,” they tweeted today.
The RCMP added: “We thank the community for their patience & understanding & ask them to continue to be vigilant.”
Earlier a member of an elite sniper unit said he was preparing to leave York Landing.
The heavily armed, highly trained marksman said he arrived with his unit and an attack dog no more than an hour after the sighting at York Landing was reported at 4.15pm (local time) on Sunday.
“We were here in the fastest time possible but the dog picked up no scent and we couldn’t find any trace of them,” he added.
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LOCALS LIVE IN FEAR
Ida Beardy, 38, a mum of three in York Landing, said: “Everyone is not happy that the boys have not been caught. The community is scared because of the danger and I don’t want to let my kids out of the house.
“For us here it’s bad but it’s worse for the families of the victims. We have police here protecting us but the only thing the police can do for the families is to find the killers.”
NSW Police Chief Inspector Stephen Fowler is still in Canada investigating the murders of his son Lucas and his son’s American girlfriend, Chynna Deese.
Ms Deese’s mother welcomed the support Inspector Fowler continued to give to the investigation.
“Lucas’s family are really representing me there in a mighty way,” Sheila Deese said.
“I am so appreciative for them.
“They are representing me because I can’t. I don’t have the expertise.”
TEAMS PULL OUT OF YORK LANDING
Police teams hunting the suspected teen serial killers who gunned down Lucas and Chynna have begun pulling out of the remote indigenous community where the duo were supposedly spotted.
An officer revealed to News Corp: “Some of the teams that have completed their patrols are headed back to Gillam from where they just arrived. There is a problem substantiating the sighting of the suspects.”
McLeod, 19, and Schemgelsky, 18, were said to have been seen scavenging at York Landing’s food dump on Sunday afternoon.
Scores of officers rushed to the area and the landscape was swept by a massive Canadian military Hercules aircraft bristling with hi-tech detection equipment.
Officers in military-style fatigues armed with assault rifles and dogs carried out patrols, other investigators hunted the pair on quad bikes and boats but there has been no trace of the pair who are believed to have shot to death three people.
They have now been on the run for two weeks prompting Canadian police to dub the pair “little Houdinis”.
The head of the indigenous community in Canada’s remote York Landing where the suspected killers of Australian backpacker Lucas Fowler were reportedly seen desperately searching for food at a rubbish dump says he believes the sighting was genuine.
Leroy Constant, chief of the Northern Manitoba First Nation of York Landing, said: “We don’t doubt the sighting at all. We believe absolutely that it was genuine and the response was right and proper.”
The 4.15pm Sunday sighting was reported by two members of the Bear Clan Patrol, a Winnipeg-based indigenous organisation which travels to remote communities to help deal with issues such as security.
Overnight an RCMP spokeswoman said they haven’t been able to “substantiate” the sighting.
“Our number one priority is to find those individuals so we can at least go from there,” Cpl Julie Courchaine told media.
“We have not made contact with them. We still need to try and locate these individuals and find out who they are.
“We are putting as many resources as possible into this area to identify them. It has been challenging up there. This is northern Manitoba, when we get a tip we can’t just drive there in 20 minutes. It is challenging terrain.”
Chief Constant today said the Emergency Response Team will head back to Gillam and develop a plan moving forward. The Major Crime Unit has also left the community.
“10 officers will remain in York Landing overnight. This will include 5 Containment Officers/ 5 General Duty members out of the Thompson Detachment. They will be departing on the 8am ferry,” the community leader said in a public post.
Locals were being told on Monday afternoon that they can safely leave their homes to go to the local shop and run errands for the first time in almost 24 hours since the fugitives were supposedly spotted.
“People can go out of their homes now for food and so on. We’ve checked all members of the community are safe and everyone is accounted for,” Chief Constant said.
“Police are continuing to patrol but we believe it is safe now. No vehicles have been stolen and no abandoned vehicles have been found.
“There has been no sightings of the suspects.”
POLICE FOCUS ON PATH OF HYDRO LINES
York Landing sits in the centre of Canada’s vast wilderness about 1000km north of the US border states of North Dakota and Minnesota, and is south of Hudson Bay.
In the summer, the remote town is accessible only by road and ferry, by a rail line from Gillam that runs about 25km south of York Landing or a hydro line trail.
Officers concentrated on the hydro lines that have cut a path through the surrounding forest and bush to the village.
There is speculation the suspects followed the hydro lines, dotted with pylons that take electricity from the nearby hydro-electric dams, to homes around northern Canada.
Travis Bighetty from Winnipeg-based Bear Clan Patrol, an organisation set up to assist the Native Indian community across Manitoba, was patrolling in a pick-up truck with a colleague in York Landing when he believes he saw McLeod and Schmegelsky.
“One of them was wearing a grey-coloured hoodie and the other was in army fatigues, just like in the wanted pictures.
“They weren’t carrying anything, I didn’t see any weapon; no guns, and they weren’t carrying any bags.
“They were tall, too, just like how the police described them. They looked desperate.”
Bear Patrol Inc executive director James Favel said that when the pair believed to be the murder suspects spotted the patrol, “they bolted”.
The pair ran for the trees and the patrol called police.
“All hell is breaking loose and the town is locked down,” Mr Favel said.
He said it was the absence of a work truck that made the patrol suspicious.
“The adrenaline hit,” he said.
Two brown bears were rummaging at the food dump where suspects McLeod and Schmegelsky were believed to have been spotted.
CURFEWS AND LOCKDOWNS
One local, who did not want to be named, said: “It is usually so quiet here, all this activity is alarming.
“We’re all worried about this situation.
“To get here from Gillam they must have followed a power line.
“Electricity are dotted along the power lines and the ground is cleared so it’s easy to walk along.
“It wouldn’t be possible to walk through the bush to get here, it’s too dense.
“There’s no road, either.
“There’s a track in the winter that can be used but it has to cross water so it can only be crossed when it’s frozen.”
The manhunt is dominating the Canadian news cycle and has seen residents in towns where the fugitives were spotted observe curfews and lock down their homes.
Searchers spent the morning completing a door knock of more than 250 homes and an abandoned worker’s lodge near Gillam, where the teens were last sighted before the unconfirmed sighting in York Landing.
“Somehow they must have walked there (to York Landing) but it is a long way from where they were last known to be,” said a member of the Bear Clan Patrol.
Accessible only by a two-hour ferry or by air, York Landing has only 500 full time inhabitants, who mainly earn their living through fishing.
There is one food store and one petrol station.
A makeshift hotel has 30 rooms and is usually full of workmen maintaining power lines in the area that take electricity from the hydro electric dams across the region.
There is one restaurant.
Sylvia Saunders, First National Safety Officer in the town of Split Lake, from where a ferry takes two hours to get to York Landing, said locals were shocked at the drama unfolding over the water.
“There’s a police helicopter in the air and drones, people have been told to say indoors,” she said.
“It’s a small community, about 500 people. There is a radio station there and no internet or phone service.
“The only phone service and Wi-Fi is by the airport.
“People there fish, that’s how that make their money.
“No-one ever expected these boys to turn up there.
“It’s such a remote and difficult place to get to.”
Mr Fowler, 23, from Sydney, and his North Carolina girlfriend Deese, 24, were on a Canadian road trip in BC two weeks ago when their old van broke down on a highway.
Their bodies were found in a ditch beside the freeway.
Four days later a botanist, Leonard Dyck, was found dead on another BC highway.
McLeod and Schmegelsky then drove 3000km east to the Gillam area before torching a Toyota RAV4.
The teenagers and longtime best friends lived on Vancouver Island, had worked at a Walmart, but told family members they were driving north to Yukon to find work.
McLeod and Schmegelsky were originally declared missing when the three bodies were first found, but the RCMP last week charged the duo with Mr Dyck’s second-degree murder and launched the nationwide manhunt.
Originally published as Teen fugitives were stopped by police but let go as Lucas Fowler’s top cop dad starts personal search
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