B.C. police searching for 2 missing, investigating murders

The separate discoveries of three bodies and a burning car with missing occupants are shaking rural northern British Columbia.

Canadian police said late Sunday they were searching for two men whose burning car was discovered on Friday about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Dease Lake.

During that investigation, they found an unidentified body a little over a mile (about 2 kilometers) from the car.

It’s about 300 miles (500 kilometers) along remote highways from the spot where an Australian and his American girlfriend were found murdered a week ago.

Police acknowledged in a news release that “there are growing community concerns about the ongoing homicide investigations in northern B.C.”

Police said the burned vehicle belonged to 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, both of Port Alberni, British Columbia.

The two were travelling through British Columbia to Whitehorse in the Yukon to look for work and had not been in contact with their families for the past few days, police said. There is no cellphone coverage in many parts of the region.

Police said they were still working to identify the male body that was found, determine the cause of death and whether there was any connection with the two missing men.

But they did confirm that the body they found was not that of either of the missing teens.

Dease Lake is about 300 miles (500 kilometers) away from where 23-year-old Australian Lucas Fowler and his 24-year-old American girlfriend Chynna Deese were found murdered along the Alaska Highway near Liard Hot Springs.

Police said that investigators “are sharing information” about the cases, but didn’t say whether any connection between the two has yet been made

Fowler, who is from the Sydney, Australia, was living in British Columbia and Deese was visiting him.

Lucas’s father Stephen Fowler is a chief inspector with the New South Wales Police Department. A statement from the family posted on the department’s website said, “To lose someone so young and vibrant, who was travelling the world and just enjoying life to the full, is devastating,” the statement says.

A statement posted on Facebook by Deese’s sister, Kennedy, said the North Carolina family was “in shock and heartbroken.”