Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were both wanted on Canada-wide warrants. (supplied/RCMP)

By Nikita Ganovicheff

Where it started

Meadow Lake resident recalls spotting B.C. murder suspects, informing RCMP

Aug 9, 2019 | 4:42 PM

As coroners in Manitoba perform autopsies on two bodies believed to be that of Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky, the resident who spotted them in Meadow Lake is now reflecting on the interaction.

RCMP assistant commissioner Jane MacLatchy said officers located two male bodies the morning of Aug. 7 near the shoreline of the Nelson River in dense brush. The bodies were located a kilometre from where several items linked to the two young men were previously found and eight kilometres from where a burned out SUV connected to the pair was located three weeks ago.

McLeod, 19, and Schmegelsky, 18, of Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, were spotted at a hardware store in Meadow Lake by Carla on July 21. She did not want to provide her last name to meadowlakeNOW for privacy concerns.

She notified RCMP the next day after recognizing their faces in a news article when the two were still considered missing. Carla said the RCMP called her back the next day and confirmed she had seen the two B.C. men.

She remembered the two being tall and said Schmegelsky was wearing military-style clothing but had no military decorations.

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“I am super sad because those two boys that I saw, that I didn’t know were missing or suspects, were just your normal, everyday young people. Bryer was polite when he was talked to and he said thank you. I’m sad that those two boys had such disturbed perspectives, that they had the childhood they did,” Carla said.

Schmegelsky and McLeod, who were childhood friends, led police on a manhunt that spanned four provinces after they were identified as suspects in the shooting deaths of Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese. Their bodies were found beside their van on the Alaska Highway on July 15.

On July 19, the body of 64-year-old Leonard Dyck was found on a highway pullout about 470 kilometres southwest of where Fowler and Deese were killed.

Carla said she is sad for the victim’s families as closure will be tough to come by and a proper course of justice is going to be missing.

However, she said she is “relieved that everybody can now relax and not think that they’ve seen them here or there.”

“Hopefully all the speculation can actually stop,” she added.

Carla said the experience was stressful, unnerving and “very uncomfortable.”

“There’s definitely nothing sensationally cool about having called it in,” Carla said.

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nikita.ganovicheff@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @Nikitaganov