Ten people have died after stabbings in 13 places in two communities in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Police were looking for two suspects.
Fifteen people had been taken to hospital after stabbings at multiple locations Sunday in the James Smith Cree Nation and the village of Weldon, northeast of Saskatoon, police said.
Rhonda Blackmore, the assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan, said some of the victims appeared to have been targeted by the suspects, but others appeared to have been attacked at random. She did not provide a reason.
“It’s horrible what happened in our province today,” Blackmore said.
He said there are 13 crime scenes where people were found dead or injured.
Police said the last information they had from the public was that the suspects were seen in Saskatchewan’s capital, Regina, around lunchtime. Since then there have been no observations.
“If you are in the Regina area, please take precautions and consider sheltering in place,” the RCMP said in a message on Twitter. “Do not leave a safe place. DO NOT APPROACH suspicious persons. Do not pick up hitchhikers. Report suspicious persons, emergencies or information to 9-1-1. Do not disclose police locations.”
The search for suspects came as fans enjoying the long Labor Day weekend descended on Regina for a sold-out Canadian Football League game between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Regina police said that with the assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) they were investigating on multiple fronts to locate and arrest the suspects and had “deployed additional public safety resources across the city, including the soccer game at Mosaic Stadium.”
The alert first issued by the RCMP in Melfort, Saskatchewan around 7 a.m. was expanded hours later to cover Manitoba and Alberta as the two suspects remained at large.
Damien Sanderson was described as 5 feet 7 inches and 155 pounds, and Myles Sanderson as 6 feet 1 inch and 200 pounds. Both were said to have black hair and brown eyes and were possibly driving a black Nissan Rogue.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority said patients were being treated at multiple locations.
“Additional personnel were called in to respond to the influx of casualties,” a spokeswoman, Anne Linemann, said in an email.
Stars Air Ambulance spokesman Mark Oddan said two helicopters were dispatched from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and another from Regina.
Oddan said two took patients from the scene to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, while the third took a patient to Royal University from a hospital in Melfort, a short distance south- east of Weldon.
Oddan said that due to privacy laws, he could not disclose information about their ages, genders or conditions.