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Police in Manitoba say they’re searching for the shooter in a targeted double homicide that left a corner of cottage country on Lake Winnipeg shaken on Friday.
Manitoba RCMP received reports of gunshots on Hampton Road in the Sandy Bay cottage area of the rural municipality of Victoria Beach, about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg, around 2 a.m., they said.
Officers found a Winnipeg man, 29, and a Victoria Beach woman, 41, dead.
Police say someone they describe as a person of interest took off from the scene in a white truck and travelled south down Highway 59 before officers arrived.
“Everybody is pretty alarmed,” Alain Landry, who has lived in the area for five years and been coming to the community for three decades, told CBC News on Friday afternoon.
RCMP Sgt. Paul Manaigre said he wasn’t aware of whether the property was previously known to police. Investigators were still trying to figure out as of Friday afternoon who legally owns the lot.
“We believe [it] to be targeted,” Manaigre said during an afternoon news conference near the crime scene.
“We don’t want people to think that there’s a killer going from cottage to cottage and just randomly shooting people. That’s not what we believe occurred here.”
The victims were found in or near one of the two cottages on the property, said Manaigre. Police don’t yet know what connection there is between the two victims or the person who killed them.
Landry said he drove by the property around midnight and didn’t notice anything suspicious.
He found out about the shooting Friday morning, when he got a text from someone asking if he was OK.
Landry said he wasn’t “utterly surprised” to hear about the double homicide, however, saying there have been “shenanigans” in the area the past couple years.”
“Local law enforcements are doing whatever they can to clean it up,” said Landry.
Victoria Beach police and Powerview RCMP will be helping major crimes and forensic units in the area over the coming days, said Manaigre, but he said there’s no indication of danger to people in the area.
“This is a beautiful area. There’s a lot of people that come out,” said Manaigre. “We don’t want people to be concerned with coming to the cottage this weekend. We want them to be assured … we’re investigating.”
Anyone with information that could help investigators, including surveillance camera footage from properties in the area, can call RCMP at 204-367-8728. Tips can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers online or anonymously by phone at 1-800-222-8477.
Manitoba RCMP believe the people killed in a Friday double homicide in the rural municipality of Victoria Beach were targeted, and say others in the cottage country area on Lake Winnipeg don’t need to fear for their safety.