Canadian police expand search for 2 suspects after deadly knife attacks
By Dan Bilefsky and Austin Ramzy
SASKATCHEWAN -The horror began at 5:40 a.m. Sunday (4), when the police received a report of a stabbing at a sleepy, rural Indigenous reserve in Saskatchewan. By the time the rampage was over, hours later, police said that 10 people had been killed and 15 injured — some apparently chosen at random — in a killing spree that has shaken the community and the country.
On Monday (5), the police said a search was underway for two men named as suspects in the killings — Damien Sanderson and Myles Sanderson — who they said were considered armed and dangerous. Canadian authorities told residents in the James Smith Cree Nation and the nearby village of Weldon to shelter at home as they expanded the search almost 200 miles south to Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan province.
Some of the victims were taken by helicopter to Royal University Hospital, the province’s main trauma centre.
In a country that prides itself on its civility, the knife attack was one of the worst in recent memory, and the brutality of the crime was reverberating Monday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “shocked and devastated by the horrific attacks.”
“As Canadians, we mourn with everyone affected by this tragic violence,” he added.
“Our hearts break for all those impacted,” said Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial federation of Indigenous groups. He called on the authorities to “create safer and healthier communities for our people.”
Canada has been grappling with violence against Indigenous people, which has received increased attention in recent years. That is partly because of grim new discoveries about the extent of the violence and endemic discrimination, including a discovery last year of suspected graves at a former residential school in British Columbia.
The police were investigating 13 crime scenes and said they believed that the suspects had targeted some victims while others were attacked randomly.
James Smith Cree Nation and the village of Weldon, where the attacks took place, are in central Saskatchewan, near where farmlands in the south of the province meet the forested areas of the north. The James Smith Cree Nation has 3,412 members, with nearly 2,000 living on its reserve, according to its website. It is about 30 miles east of Prince Albert, the third-largest city in Saskatchewan, with about 37,000 residents.
A dangerous persons alert was expanded in the afternoon to the provinces of Manitoba and Alberta. The suspects were believed to be traveling in a black Nissan Rogue, according to authorities, who said a driver had spotted the vehicle at 11:45 a.m. in Regina. But the authorities cautioned that the men may have changed their vehicle, and their direction of travel was unknown.
Evan Bray, the Regina police chief, said in a video posted Sunday night on Twitter that the men “are likely” in the city, without offering details of how the police reached that conclusion.
He reassured residents of Regina, a city of about 226,000 people, that the police had dedicated “a lot of resources” to finding the men and asked residents to provide any relevant information to the police.
-New York Times
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