RCMP in Dease Lake are actively searching for Port Alberni teens Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky.
Carol Starkey, Schmegelsky’s grandmother, said the two left Port Alberni on July 12 to find work in Whitehorse, but when they got there it wasn’t what they expected.
Alan Schmegelsky, Bryer’s father, said the pair have been best friends since elementary school, and had been working night shifts at the Walmart in Port Alberni to save money for the trip.
The boys are now embroiled in a murder mystery that has northern BC residents on edge as one man was found dead two kilometres from their burned out truck and camper.
Police don’t know if there’s any connection between this case and a tourist couple who were found shot to death a few hundred kilometres away.
Sgt. Janelle Shoihet, a media relations officer for the RCMP, said in a press conference Monday that it is unusual to have two simultaneous major crime investigations in northern B.C.
Schmegelsky said neither Bryer nor Kam is violent or into drugs, and they love to play computer games that simulate war and involve hunting and camouflage. He told reporters that if the boys sensed any kind of danger, they would have gone into the woods and hid. With no cellphones and no GPS, they probably got lost.
Schmegelsky, who is separated from Bryer’s mother, said the last time he saw his son was on June 28, and he learned Bryer was missing when he saw a story in a newspaper.
“No one contacted me,” he told a Times-Colonist reporter. “But they should have. I shouldn’t be sitting in Starbucks seeing my kid’s picture.”
