Edmonton Police have arrested and charged six young men after a pair of brazen slayings two months ago, the latest part of an ongoing saga that has seen more than a dozen Canadians of Central East African descent killed in Alberta.
The six accused men were arrested on Nov. 11 after the deaths of Jesse Lee James, a 23-year-old who was gunned down in broad daylight on Sept. 4, and Emmanuel Amoah, 19, whose remains were discovered on Sept. 19, nearly two weeks after he had disappeared.
Given the "high-profile" nature of the killings, police moved quickly, said Staff Sergeant Lorne Pubantz, head of the Edmonton Police Service homicide squad. "We had concerns that other similar incidents might take place. Solving this crime was a priority for us," he said.
Police stayed tight-lipped on what connected the two cases, but acknowledged they have ties to Edmonton's drug and gang scene. Of the six men facing charges, two are charged in both slayings - the first such time in the city's history that two people have been charged at once in two separate killings, police say.
"This was an unprecedented investigation," Edmonton Police Chief Mike Boyd said, after announcing the arrests Monday.
Charged in both deaths are an 18-year-old man, who was 17 at the time of the deaths and therefore can't be identified, and 19-year-old Mahamed Abdulle. Both face two counts of second-degree murder and one count of committing an "indignity" to a dead body.
Jason Kadeem Williams, 19, and Christopher Macoon-Evans, 21, each face a charge of second-degree murder in the case of Mr. James. Two other youths, who were 17 and 16 at the time of Mr. Amoah's deaths, face charges of second-degree murder in that case, as well as charges of interfering with the body.
The charges suggest Mr. Amoah's remains were moved or desecrated after his death. Staff Sgt. Pubantz declined to say what was done to the remains. At the time, police needed an autopsy to confirm the teen's identity.
Mr. Abdulle is of Somali descent, while family said in September that Mr. Amoah, the victim, was from Ghana.
The Edmonton Police Service is faced with about a dozen unsolved murders of people of Central East African descent, and has offered rewards of $40,000 in each of the cases. Many of them are tied to the drug trade, with the victims hailing from the Toronto area, from where much of Alberta's narcotics are shipped. The province's Somali-Canadian community has called for a provincial investigation and says more than 30 Somali-Canadians have been killed in the province, though police forces have played down that figure. In Edmonton, the majority of the unsolved cases involve victims who are Somali-Canadians.
Staff Sgt. Pubantz said that while police aren't yet aware of any other victims tied specifically to the deaths of Mr. James and Mr. Amoah, "the investigations continue, and I'll leave it at that."
Chief Boyd added that his police department "continues to actively investigate several other unsolved homicides."
Edmonton had 30 murders in 2009, for a per-capita rate that ranked third-highest among Canada's largest cities, according to Statistics Canada.