After a series of fatal knife attacks in Canada, one of the suspects has been found dead. This was announced by the police chief of Regina, the capital of the province of Saskatchewan, on Monday (local time). The man had injuries that he did not inflict himself. The dead man’s brother, who is also considered a suspect, could be injured and is still on the run. He may be in Regina, Police Chief Evan Bray said.
On Sunday, 10 people were killed and 18 injured in knife attacks on the James Smith Cree Nation reservation and in the village of Weldon. Saskatchewan Police Deputy Chief Rhonda Blackmore said some victims appeared to have been targeted while suspects killed others indiscriminately. The police spoke of a total of 13 crime scenes.
Two men with the same last name, aged 30 and 31, were named as suspects. Later it became known that they are brothers. One of them had already been searched for in a different context last May. According to investigators, the two were last seen on Sunday afternoon (local time) in Regina, around 335 kilometers south of the crime scene. Authorities in Saskatchewan’s neighboring provinces of Manitoba and Alberta also called on residents to be vigilant. In many places in otherwise rather quiet rural Canada, the fear continued on Monday.
The motive for the actions in the reservation for indigenous people and the nearby village remained unclear.
The head of the Association of Indigenous Nations of Canada, Bobby Cameron, assumed a connection with drug-related crime. “This is the devastation we face when illicit drugs enter our communities,” he said. The situation in the reserves must improve.
The most momentous bloody crime in Canada’s recent history occurred in 2020, when a man disguised as a police officer killed 22 people in a shooting spree in the province of Nova Scotia. A year earlier in Toronto, a man drove his vehicle into passers-by, killing ten people. In Canada, such violent crimes are relatively less common than in the neighboring United States.
