A DAYS-LONG search for the second man suspected of carrying out a stabbing spree in a remote western Canadian Indigenous community ended yesterday, with the 32-year-old dying after being taken into custody, police said.

Federal police Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore told a news conference that Myles Sanderson “went into medical distress” shortly after being arrested in Saskatchewan province, and that he was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

She gave no other details of the circumstances.

An AFP reporter at the scene near Rosthern saw several police cars surrounding a white pick-up along the side of a highway. 

An hour before the arrest, police issued an alert about a man armed with a knife in a stolen white Chevy Avalanche nearby, making a link to the stabbing case and urging locals to shelter in place.

Blackmore said police, after receiving an emergency call about the theft, spotted the speeding vehicle and “directed (it) off the road and into a nearby ditch.”

“He was arrested by police and taken into custody,” she said.

“A knife was located inside the vehicle.”

It was a dramatic end to a four-day manhunt across the vast Prairies region for Myles Sanderson and his brother Damien, believed to be responsible for the killings on Sunday.

It also offered relief to a nation distressed by one of modern Canada’s deadliest incidents of mass violence.

The manhunt had stretched across three provinces, and gone from Regina, Saskatchewan province’s capital 300km to the south, and then back to the James Smith Cree Nation – in response to reported sightings.

On Monday, the search turned up the body of 31-year-old Damien Sanderson in a grassy field in the Cree community.

Authorities said he likely had been killed by his 32-year-old sibling, who remained a fugitive until his arrest near the town of Rosthern in Saskatchewan – about 100km west of where the stabbings occurred.

“Our province is breathing a collective sigh of relief as Miles Sanderson is no longer at large,” Blackmore commented, adding that now the families of victims and the community “will be able to start healing.”

‘Senseless act’

With no known motive for the attacks, relatives of victims spoke out yesterday about their “nightmare” and called for answers from authorities.

Mark Arcand said the killings that claimed the lives of his sister Bonnie Burns, 48, and her son Gregory Burns, 28, were a “horrible, senseless act.”

“We’re broken,” he said, describing feelings of anger and sadness. “It still feels like it’s a nightmare. It doesn’t feel real.”

“How did this happen to our family? Why did it happen? We have no answers,” he told a press conference. “We just know that our family members were killed in their own home, in their yard.”

Arcland recounted how his sister had rushed out of her house to help her son, who was bleeding out in the driveway of their home after being stabbed several times.

“She was stabbed two times, and she died right beside him,” he said. “She was trying to protect her son.”

A neighbour ran over to try to stop the assailants, but she was also stabbed to death, he said.

The family and the community, Arcland added, has “a steep hill to climb, and we’re going to climb it together, united.”

The Saskatchewan Coroner’s Service has released the names of the deceased victims – six men and four women aged 23 to 78 years old. 

All but one were members of the Cree community. The other was a widower who lived with his adult grandson in nearby Weldon.

Several vigils were scheduled for yesterday evening.

Those wounded in the attack were 17 adults and one young teen, police said. Among them was another son of Bonnie Burns who was slashed in the neck.

Several of the deceased had been identified by families and friends on social media, including a veteran, an addiction counsellor, and a mother of two who worked as a security guard at a local casino.

Police believe some of the victims were targeted and others were attacked randomly.

Ten people – some of whom had been airlifted on Sunday – remain hospitalised, including three in critical condition, according the Saskatchewan Health Authority. Seven others have been discharged. – AFP, September 8, 2022.