JAMES SMITH CREE NATION, Saskatchewan: A mother of two, a 77-year-old widower and a first responder were the initial victims identified in a stabbing spree in Canada that killed 10 people and wounded at least 18 others.
Canadian police said on Monday (Sep 5) they found one of the suspects in the mass stabbing spree dead while the other suspect, his brother, remained at large.
Police are still trying to determine a motive for Sunday’s attacks, mostly in a sparsely populated indigenous community, that shocked a country where mass violence is rare.
The incidents took place in the James Smith Cree Nation and village of Weldon in the province of Saskatchewan, police said.
Hours before the stabbings, Lana Head, a mother of two daughters, posted on Facebook that she had “so many good memories to cherish”.
Head’s friends and family were shocked by her death and paid tributes on social media. “Not the way I wanted her to leave this world,” said Melodie Whitecap, Head’s childhood friend who had planned to visit her before the stabbing.
Head’s former partner also spoke to local media and implied the stabbings might have been related to drugs and alcohol.
“It’s sick how jail time, drugs and alcohol can destroy many lives,” Michael Brett Burns, Head’s former partner, told the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. A statement by indigenous leaders also indicated the attacks might have been drug-related.
Ivor Burns and Darryl Burns from the James Smith Cree Nation told Reuters their sister, Gloria, was among the dead. They blamed drugs and alcohol as well.
“We have 10 people dead, including my sister. She was butchered … with her friend and a 14-year-old boy, all three of them,” Ivor Burns said in an interview.
For all the latest world News Click Here
