On the morning of Sunday, September 4, 2022, eleven people died and seventeen more were hurt across James Smith Cree Nation, a Cree community in central Saskatchewan, and in the nearby village of Weldon. One of them was Damien Sanderson, a brother of the man the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would hold responsible for all eleven. That man, Myles Sanderson, was a federal offender in his early thirties who had been released from a penitentiary sentence the previous year and had been wanted on a suspension warrant since May.
He remained at large for three days. On September 7 the RCMP arrested him south of the town of Rosthern, and within hours he was dead. He never stood trial. A month later the commanding officer of the Saskatchewan RCMP told the public that investigators had concluded "Myles Sanderson committed all of the homicides alone," and the Crown withdrew every charge laid in the case. In place of a trial came a series of public reckonings: an internal review of the police response, a national board of investigation into his release and supervision, and two coroner's inquests in 2024, one into the eleven deaths and one into his own. Together they produced well over fifty recommendations, and the provincial chief coroner said the first inquest alone had generated more than any he had seen in Saskatchewan.
James Smith Cree Nation lies northeast of Saskatoon, about forty-five kilometers from the RCMP detachment in Melfort. It is home to about 1,900 people and is made up of three bands, among them the Chakastaypasin Band and the Peter Chapman Band. Weldon, a small village about thirty kilometers away, is the home of the only person among the dead who did not live on the First Nation. In the days after the deaths, senators rising in Ottawa described a community they called strong, resilient and closely connected, and one already marked by the intergenerational harm of the residential school system. Leaders on the Nation had long asked for on-reserve addiction treatment, more money for policing and long-term mental health support, and they renewed those calls within days.
Myles Sanderson was raised on James Smith Cree Nation. Court and parole records later summarized by the Associated Press describe a childhood marked by violence, neglect and substance abuse; he began drinking at about twelve and moved to harder drugs soon after, and he later told parole officials that drugs had at times left him "out of his mind." The parole board, in its own reasons, listed the intergenerational effects of residential schools, family fragmentation, a lack of education and the loss of culture and spirituality among the factors in his history. Many of his offenses were committed while he was intoxicated, and he repeatedly broke court orders that barred him from drinking or using drugs.
By the time he reached federal custody he had fifty-nine convictions as an adult, gathered over nearly two decades. The offenses ran to assault, uttering threats, mischief, assaulting a peace officer and robbery. One of the earliest that later drew attention dated from 2015, when he pleaded guilty to assault and to threatening the life of Earl Burns. Seven years later Earl Burns would be among the dead. In 2017 he was convicted of uttering threats, and later that year of robbery.
In September 2018 he received his first federal sentence: four years, four months and nineteen days, for offenses that included assault, robbery, mischief, assaulting a peace officer, uttering threats and a further assault offense. He was transferred from a provincial facility to a federal penitentiary in Saskatchewan in May 2019.
The parole officer assigned to him inside the penitentiary in the fall of 2019 later told the inquest that he arrived guarded, adversarial and accusatory, and that over time he became far more engaged. He worked with an Elder and entered a high-intensity program, though the pandemic interrupted it, and at one point he declined a recommended program because it would have changed his exercise time. Two Elders who met him in custody described a quiet, respectful man who seemed remorseful and said he wanted to be present for his children; one of them, who found him receptive to traditional teachings and "of sober mind" inside, warned that he would need care once released.
His history with his former partner, the mother of his children, was the concern that ran through every stage of his file. She later testified at the inquest to years of domestic violence. When he said he wanted to live with her after release, his parole officer treated it as a red flag, and the Parole Board of Canada eventually barred contact.
In February 2021 the board denied him both day parole and full parole. A review that year found that he met the basic criteria for detention past his release date, but his conduct was rated good, and he was moved to minimum security and then to a healing lodge. Correctional staff considered holding him until the end of his sentence and decided instead that he could be released on conditions. He was scored low on reintegration potential because of his violent history and his lack of family and community support.
His home community had been ready to take him back. A teleconference among Myles Sanderson, the Correctional Service of Canada and the chief of the Chakastaypasin Band showed that the band supported his return, on the expectation that he would see an addictions counselor and stay sober. That plan fell away when he asked to be released to Saskatoon instead, to live with his father. Because he was never released to the First Nation, the correctional service did not notify it.
In August 2021, having served two-thirds of his sentence, Myles Sanderson left the penitentiary on statutory release to Saskatoon. He was placed under the highest level of supervision. He was to meet his parole officer at least eight times a month, live with his father full-time, stay free of drugs and alcohol, avoid criminal associates, take part in treatment, obey no-contact orders and begin no relationship with a woman without his parole officer's written permission.
On November 3, 2021, his parole office found that he had been living with his former partner and had not reported the relationship. His supervisor later testified that he had lied about where he was living eight times before the truth came out. A warrant was issued, he turned himself in the same day, and his release was suspended.
The Parole Board of Canada heard the case and, on February 1, 2022, declined to revoke his release. It canceled the suspension and released him with a reprimand, over the recommendation of his supervisor and his parole officer that the release be cancelled. In a decision of nearly ten pages, the board weighed the absence of any new criminal charge, his immediate surrender, four months of sobriety confirmed by testing, his work, his therapy and his participation in Indigenous cultural activities, and a new plan to live somewhere other than with his former partner. It found that he would not present an undue risk to society and set conditions on his contact with his partner and his children.
That same month he breached his conditions a second time, by seeing one of his children without the required permission. Officers judged the breach unintentional, since he had not understood the condition, and left him in the community. For several months in the spring of 2022 his supervisor considered him to be doing well, attending programming and holding steady work.
On May 23, 2022, he tried to see his former partner in defiance of the no-contact order. Parole staff saw an escalation. A warrant of apprehension and suspension was issued the next day, and from then on Myles Sanderson was unlawfully at large. His parole office passed what it knew to the police and, it later told investigators, received nothing back. Privacy rules, the office said, prevented it from telling James Smith Cree Nation about the warrant without his consent. An RCMP staff sergeant testified that he would not have ranked among the province's sixty most-wanted people.
On September 3, 2022, the day before the deaths, the Melfort RCMP were looking for Damien Sanderson over a vehicle reported stolen early that morning. Officers recovered the vehicle and patrolled the Nation without finding him. His brother was not yet the focus of police attention.
The first emergency call came in before dawn on Sunday, September 4. It went to the Melfort detachment, where two constables set out together and reached the first scene about thirty-seven minutes after the call was dispatched, a response time the RCMP review later judged appropriate for the distance. As more calls came in, the two officers split up to cover different scenes, and reinforcements arrived over the following hours. The RCMP issued its first public alert early that morning, telling residents to shelter in place, and a second that named Myles and Damien Sanderson as suspects. Thirteen more alerts followed over the course of the event, and the alert was extended to Alberta and Manitoba.
The RCMP later said that Damien Sanderson was the first person to die that morning. An RCMP criminal profiler told the inquest that Myles Sanderson had carried a list of grievances and was prepared to harm anyone who stood in his way. Some of the people who died appeared to have been targeted; others, the RCMP said, appeared to have been chosen at random. Investigators eventually counted more than forty scenes across the Nation and in Weldon.
The Saskatchewan Coroners Service released the names of ten of the dead on September 7, with their families' permission. Nine lived on James Smith Cree Nation. In tributes in the Senate of Canada two weeks later, senators put on the record something of who each of them had been.
Carol Burns was remembered for an infectious laugh, a good sense of humor, a sunny disposition and an immense love of family. Her son Thomas Burns also died; friends called him funny and kind.
Gregory Burns, known to his family as Jonesy, was the father of two children. His mother, Bonnie Burns, also died that morning. She was a member of Dakota First Nation, a devoted wife, mother and foster mother who lived for her children; she and her husband were known for always laughing and joking together.
Lydia Gloria Burns was an Elder in the community, remembered as a very caring person.
Earl Burns was a loving father and grandfather.
Lana Head was a mother of daughters. Robert Sanderson also lived on the Nation.
Christian Head was an avid golfer who loved car shows and riding ATVs, and who had taught his toddler grandchildren to speak.
Wesley Petterson lived in Weldon. He was a widower who kept a daily coffee group, loved his cats and was proud of his homemade Saskatoon berry jam. Friends remembered him as kind and dedicated to his village.
Damien Sanderson, the eleventh, was named separately by the RCMP on September 5. The seventeen people who survived their injuries were never publicly identified.
On September 5 the RCMP charged both brothers. Myles Sanderson was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of break and enter; Damien Sanderson with one count of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of breaking and entering. That afternoon the RCMP announced that Damien Sanderson was himself among the dead. From then on, the inquiry centered on one man.
For three days the province waited. Police reported sightings and followed them up, closed approaches to the Nation on one occasion and later called that report a false alarm, and acted on more than a hundred emergency calls. More than five hundred RCMP members took part in the response, joined by municipal police, provincial conservation and highway patrol officers and victim services workers.
On the afternoon of September 7, after a report from the Crystal Springs area and a sighting near One Arrow First Nation, the RCMP located Myles Sanderson and arrested him south of Rosthern. He died that afternoon in Saskatoon. Saskatchewan's Serious Incident Response Team, which examines deaths in police custody, opened its own investigation.
On October 6, 2022, the commanding officer of the Saskatchewan RCMP gave the results of the investigation. Investigators had reviewed some 250 interviews, 670 exhibits and more than one hundred emergency calls. Their conclusion was that Myles Sanderson had committed all eleven homicides alone, Damien's among them. Damien Sanderson was now considered a victim. Investigators had found that he took part in planning and preparing for what happened, but that he killed no one; the full extent of his involvement, the RCMP said, was still being examined. Eighteen people had been injured by the RCMP's count at that date, a figure later given as seventeen.
On motive, the commanding officer offered no answer. "We may never really know exactly why," she said. The Crown withdrew all charges in the case following the deaths of both brothers.
The commanding officer had ordered a review of the RCMP's response on September 13, 2022. It was carried out by the Office of Investigative Standards and Practices of the RCMP's Alberta division, with an independent observer from the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations acting as liaison to the community and cultural guide. The team interviewed more than sixty RCMP members, consulted residents of the Nation and of Weldon, and published its report in 2024.
It found no common underlying circumstance that had significantly impeded the RCMP's management of the response, and it praised the work of the first officers on the scene as outstanding in an incredibly difficult situation. It also set out areas for growth: the lack of a nationally recognized command structure for events of this size, the need for RCMP officers to be a familiar presence on the Nation, the handling of large volumes of tips, and radio coverage so poor on the reserve that officers often had to step outside buildings to transmit. Its recommendations and effective practices numbered thirty-six.
On September 23, 2022, the Correctional Service of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada convened a National Joint Board of Investigation into the case. Its six members brought expertise in corrections, policing and homicide, mental health and conditional release, and three of them were Indigenous; an Indigenous independent observer was also appointed. The two agencies made its findings public on March 12, 2024.
The board found that there were "no pre-indicators or precipitating events" known to correctional or parole staff on which they could have acted. It judged the preparation of the case before release "reasonable and appropriate," including the attention paid to his Indigenous social history, and found the parole board's written decisions well-reasoned and compliant with the governing law. It also recorded that the parole office's communications with police while he was at large had been one-way. It made four recommendations to the correctional service and ten to the parole board, among them raising the quorum for post-suspension reviews from one board member to two, clarifying when a reprimand is appropriate and continuing domestic violence training. Both agencies accepted every recommendation. Chief Wally Burns of James Smith Cree Nation said the Nation was disappointed to have been left out of the investigation and that its report had not been available to the inquests.
The coroner's inquest into the deaths of the eleven was held in Melfort from January 15 to January 31, 2024, before a presiding coroner and a jury, and was described as one of the largest and most complex in Canadian history. Its task was to establish who had died and when, where and by what means, and to make recommendations to prevent similar deaths.
Over more than two weeks the jury heard from responding officers, investigators, a forensic pathologist, correctional and parole staff, Elders and family members. A criminal investigative psychologist told the jurors that Myles Sanderson had many psychopathic traits but that he could not make a diagnosis, having never met him. Parole staff testified that nothing in his file had suggested what was coming.
The jury made fourteen recommendations, among them a national alerting system, closer collaboration between the Nation and the RCMP, more support for offenders after release, Elders to provide continuity for Indigenous offenders, and a full evaluation of community programs dealing with addiction and domestic violence. The presiding coroner added fifteen of his own, directed at the correctional service, specialized RCMP units and First Nations leadership. He proposed that the correctional service tell a First Nation when one of its members is the subject of an arrest warrant, and that the Melfort detachment and the Nation's leaders meet regularly; about one in five of the detachment's calls for service came from the Nation. The chief coroner said the total of twenty-nine was the most he had seen from an inquest in Saskatchewan.
A second inquest, into the death of Myles Sanderson himself, sat in Saskatoon from February 26 to February 29, 2024, before a six-person jury. The RCMP officers who made the arrest, the medical responders and a forensic pathologist and toxicologist all testified. A psychologist who had studied his last days concluded that he had not been trying to die. After five and a half hours of deliberation the jury found that his death was accidental and that he had not intended to take his own life.
It made four recommendations on arrest practice and police training, addressed to the Saskatoon Police Service and the RCMP.
Chief Wally Burns of James Smith Cree Nation thanked the RCMP and the medical responders for trying to save his life and said that healing had begun. He continued to press for a national inquiry, more federal money for First Nations programs and self-administered policing.
Statutory release is not parole. Under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, a federally sentenced inmate who has not been granted parole is released by law after serving two-thirds of the sentence and spends the final third under supervision in the community. The Parole Board of Canada does not grant it. The only way to hold an inmate past that date is for the correctional service to apply to the board and show reasonable grounds to believe that the person is likely to commit an offense causing death or serious harm before the sentence ends. No such application was made in Myles Sanderson's case.
The board's role begins when a release is suspended. At a post-suspension review it may cancel the suspension, cancel it with a reprimand, or revoke the release, and a revocation is not indefinite: a new release date is calculated at two-thirds of the time remaining on the sentence. On that arithmetic, a law professor at Queen's University wrote in September 2022, Myles Sanderson would most likely have been out again by the summer of 2022 even if the board had revoked his release in February. When an offender on statutory release goes unlawfully at large, the correctional service issues a suspension warrant and passes it to the police, who carry it out.
No court ever tested the evidence. Myles Sanderson died before any charge could be heard, and the RCMP's conclusion that he alone caused all eleven deaths rests on the investigation and was not examined at a trial; a coroner's inquest makes no finding of legal responsibility.
The motive was never established. The RCMP said it might never be known. The profiler and psychologist who testified at the inquests described grievances and planning, but neither had met him, and both said their conclusions rested on records and interviews.
Damien Sanderson's part remains incompletely defined. The RCMP found that he took part in planning and preparation but killed no one, and said in October 2022 that the extent of his role was still under examination.
Whether the release could or should have been stopped is still argued. His supervisor and parole officer had recommended canceling his release in November 2021, and the board disagreed in February 2022; the national board of investigation later found that decision properly reasoned and found no warning signs staff could have acted on. Leaders on the Nation have rejected that conclusion and continue to ask why they were not told of his release or of the warrant, and they have called for a national inquiry.
September 2018: Sentenced to four years, four months and nineteen days, his first federal sentence.
May 2019: Transferred to a federal penitentiary in Saskatchewan.
February 2021: Denied day parole and full parole.
August 2021: Released by law on statutory release to Saskatoon.
November 3, 2021: Found in breach of his conditions; surrendered; release suspended.
February 1, 2022: Parole Board of Canada cancels the suspension and releases him with a reprimand.
February 2022: Second breach; left in the community.
May 23, 2022: Third breach; a warrant of apprehension and suspension follows the next day, and he is unlawfully at large.
September 3, 2022: Melfort RCMP look for Damien Sanderson over a stolen vehicle.
September 4, 2022: Eleven people die and seventeen are injured on James Smith Cree Nation and in Weldon.
September 5, 2022: Charges laid against both brothers; Damien Sanderson found dead on the Nation.
September 7, 2022: Ten of the dead are named; Myles Sanderson is arrested by the RCMP south of Rosthern and dies the same day in Saskatoon.
September 13, 2022: RCMP review of the police response ordered.
September 23, 2022: National Joint Board of Investigation convened.
October 6, 2022: The RCMP attributes all eleven deaths to Myles Sanderson; charges are withdrawn.
January 15 to 31, 2024: Coroner's inquest into the eleven deaths, Melfort; twenty-nine recommendations.
February 26 to 29, 2024: Coroner's inquest into his death, Saskatoon; death found accidental.
March 12, 2024: Findings of the National Joint Board of Investigation made public.
2024: RCMP review of its response published, with thirty-six recommendations and effective practices.