MONTREAL (AFP) - Canadian police said on Wednesday (July 24) they have sent reinforcements to an isolated northern town where a torched car was linked to the suspects in three murders.
Canadians Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, are sought in the murders of Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese, along with the death of a third man, who has not been identified.
All the victims were discovered in northern British Columbia earlier this month, but the suspects have now been tracked three provinces and hundreds of miles (kilometers) away to the northern Manitoba town of Gillam, police said.
"On Monday evening, RCMP recovered a vehicle in the Gillam area after receiving a report of a vehicle fire. We can now confirm this vehicle is the same vehicle the suspects were travelling in," Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Wednesday on Twitter.
Prior to that, the suspects were last seen in the north of neighboring Saskatchewan province driving a gray Toyota RAV4.
"Manitoba RCMP has sent a number of resources to the Gillam area" near Hudson Bay, the federal police said.
The agency had earlier warned the public against interacting with McLeod and Schmegelsky.
"If you spot them - take no actions - do not approach - call 911 or your local police immediately," the RCMP said.
The Gillam area is "all swamp, heavy trees," and occasionally visited by polar bears, the town's mayor Dwayne Forman told public broadcaster CBC.
"There's only one road in and one road out," Forman said.
A RAV4 was found in flames near the town earlier this week, Canadian media reported on Wednesday.
Initially considered missing, the RCMP said on Tuesday that McLeod and Schmegelsky were instead suspects in the shooting deaths of Fowler, 23, and Deese, 24, whose bodies were found on July 15 in the remote north of British Columbia.
Police later found the body of a third man in his 50s or 60s about 480km away, near the ruins of a torched pick-up truck believed to have been used by the teen suspects.
Police think the man was killed late last week.