Two teenagers who went missing from the Whitefish Lake First Nation over the weekend have both been found dead, their bodies discovered hours and miles apart, police and family members say.
Dylan Laboucan and Cory Grey were boyfriend and girlfriend. He was 17, she was 19.
The young couple went missing Saturday from the remote community north of Slave Lake.
Laboucan’s body was found Monday evening.
Louis Grey confirmed to CBC Tuesday that his daughter’s body was found less than 24 hours later.
“Tonight, they found my girl finally, deceased, not even two kilometres from my place,” said Grey.
Both deaths are being investigated by the RCMP major crimes unit from Edmonton.
The investigation began Saturday as a missing persons case.
On Saturday between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Laboucan was found unconscious outside the trailer where he lived with his girlfriend and her mother, Louis Grey’s wife. He lives about two kilometres away.
“The guy who found them, I guess he sort of panicked,” said Grey. “He really didn’t try to revive him. He didn’t want to go inside the trailer, because he thought someone might be inside.
‘Dylan’s body was gone’
“So, he took off and went to go phone from a neighbor’s place. So, this took him about 15 to 20 minutes. When he returned back to the scene, Dylan’s body was gone. But he’d never seen my girl.”
High Prairie RCMP say they originally responded to a complaint on Saturday about an unconscious person outside a residence on the first nation. When they arrived they found no one at the scene.
RCMP listed the two as missing over the weekend.
Louis Grey said during the search for the young couple, police brought in dogs and were assisted by people from surrounding communities.
On Monday, High Prairie RCMP said they’d found a body, and the next day confirmed it was Laboucan.
He was found about six to eight kilometres from the trailer where he lived.
“Then they tried to stop us from searching anymore,” Grey said, “because we could have contaminated the crime scene.”
He said police found his daughter’s body at around 5 p.m. Tuesday.
‘I had nine kids’
“She was the youngest of my kids,” Grey said. “I had nine kids. Just three years ago, I lost my youngest son right on Christmas Day. So it’s kind of hard for the family again, to happen to our two youngest kids.”
Grey said his daughter and her boyfriend had been together for about a year. Laboucan had recently graduated from high school, he said, and his daughter graduated the year before.
Both had been accepted to go to vocational school in Slave Lake, Grey said.
“Everything was set up, even apartments and all that. And then this happened. They were a nice young couple. They had their little minor argument, but just minor. They were innocent, innocent.”
Whitefish Lake First Nation is north of Lesser Slave Lake.