Two Teens Are Suspects in the Murder of Couple Who Were on a Canadian Road Trip
On July 15, the bodies of 24-year-old Chynna Deese and 23-year-old Lucas Fowler were found alongside a highway near Liard Hot Springs, a popular tourist spot in British Columbia, Canada. According to the CBC, Deese, who was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Fowler, who was Australian, were shot and killed sometime on either July 14 or July 15. The couple had been traveling on a road trip through the area in their blue Chevrolet van.
A road worker named Alandra Hull told 9News Australia that she witnessed Deese and Fowler talking to a bearded man who “kind of looked frustrated or something” on July 14. Police now suspect that two teenagers who had previously been reported missing were involved in the murders of Deese and Fowler.
As NBC News reports, a pickup truck and camper was found on fire on July 19, about 30 miles south of Dease Lake, which is 300 miles away from where Deese and Fowler’s bodies were discovered. The vehicle had been driven by two Canadian teenagers, 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky. The two had been traveling in the Yukon area looking for work. McLeod and Schmegelsky were initially reported missing, but now police believe they killed Deese and Fowler and may have been involved in a third death. The body of an unidentified person had been found about a mile from the person’s vehicle.
“Kam and Bryer are no longer considered missing,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Janelle Shoihet told NBC News. “The RCMP are now considering Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky as suspects in the Dease Lake suspicious death and the double homicide of Lucas Fowler and Chynna Deese.” Police believe the two men may now be in Manitoba and are asking the public to consider them dangerous and to avoid contact.
Deese’s brother, British, told WCNC that his sister had met Fowler at a hostel in Croatia. She had traveled to Canada to visit him while he was working on a cattle ranch, and the two had planned a cross-country road trip. “It wasn’t anything new, and they were very well vetted in travel and safety and all that,” he said.
Police released video footage of the couple embracing at a gas station on July 13.
Deese’s mother, Sheila, told WSOC that her daughter was an experienced traveler and that she’d found her match in Fowler. “It is a love story, a Southern girl goes out of the country, meets this Australian, and they were just the same personality,” she said. “It was like two butterflies that found each other and they were going to be forever.”
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