Canadian police arrested the second suspect in the stabbing deaths of 10 people in the province of Saskatchewan on Wednesday after a three-day manhunt during which they had found the body of his brother.
The last suspect in a horrific stabbing rampage that killed 10 and wounded 18 in western Canada is dead following his capture, but how he died after being taken into custody has prompted fresh investigations, AP reports.
One official said Myles Sanderson, 32, died from self-inflicted injuries Wednesday after police forced the stolen car he was driving off a highway in Saskatchewan. Other officials declined to discuss how he died .
“I can’t speak to the specific manner of death. That’s going to be part of the autopsy that will be conducted,” Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan, said at a news conference Wednesday night.
The other suspect, Sanderson’s 30-year-old brother, Damien Sanderson, was found dead Monday near the scene of the bloody knife attacks inside and around the James Smith Cree First Nation reserve early Sunday. Both men were residents of the Indigenous reserve.
Blackmore said Myles Sanderson was cornered as police units responded to a report of a stolen vehicle driven by a man armed with a knife. She said officers forced Sanderson’s vehicle off the road and into a ditch. He was detained and a knife was found inside the vehicle, she said.
Sanderson went into medical distress while in custody, Blackmore said. She said CPR was attempted on him before an ambulance arrived and he was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“All life-saving measures that we are capable of were taken at that time,” she said.
Blackmore gave no details on the cause of death. But an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, earlier said Sanderson died of self-inflicted injuries, without elaborating.
Video and photos from the scene showed a white SUV alongside the road with police cars all around. Air bags had deployed in the SUV. Some photos and video taken from a distance appeared to show Sanderson being frisked.
Members of Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team went to the arrest site and will review Sanderson’s death and police conduct.
The federal public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, also stressed that the events will be investigated.
Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto police detective, said the police are bound by police service laws that govern the work of internal affairs when there is a death in police custody. Mendelson said police can’t comment yet on how the interaction took place or on what the officers saw or what he said to them.
“They have to at least wait until the forensic autopsy is concluded and hopefully the pathologist will come up with a cause of death. If it’s drugs, then toxicology is going to take sometime,” he said. “If it’s a stab wound that didn’t leak through his clothes then we should hear that. Everybody wants answers.”
His death came two days after the body of Damien Sanderson was found in a field near the scene of the knife rampage. Police are investigating whether Myles Sanderson killed his brother.
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