Police highlight wildlife threat as airforce joins manhunt for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky

The threat of a polar bear attack has become a reality for the huge Canadian police and military contingent searching for the teenage duo suspected of shooting dead Australian tourist Lucas Fowler, his US girlfriend and a university botanist.

The manhunt for Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, continued on Saturday with the addition of a Royal Canadian Air Force CC-130H Hercules and personnel searching the unforgiving wilderness near Gillam, a remote area in northern Manitoba.

Police being given military air support as authorities scour areas of Manitoba for teenage murder suspects

Canada’s armed forces have been drafted in to provide air support as police go door to door in the search for two teenagers suspected in three killings in the country’s remote wilderness.

Authorities have urged “all Canadians” to be on the lookout for 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, after the fatal shooting of a tourist couple – American woman Chynna Deese, 24, and her Australian boyfriend Lucas Fowler, 23 – and the murder of Vancouver professor Leonard Dyck, 64.

Alan Schmegelsky fears son will go out in ‘blaze of glory’ gun battle as police identify victim as Vancouver man Leonard Dyck

The father of one of the Canadian teenagers suspected of murdering Australian tourist Lucas Fowler and his partner, US citizen Chynna Deese, has voiced fears the manhunt will come to a violent end as police identified a third potential victim.

A distraught Alan Schmegelsky told Canadian Press his son, 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, was dealing with some “very serious pain” and he expected the search to end in “a blaze of glory” gun battle with police. “He wants his hurt to end,” Alan Schmegelsky said.