METRO VANCOUVER -- Police spent Halloween evening canvassing a Surrey park for clues following the grisly discovery of a woman's body in an nearby parking lot Thursday morning.

RCMP received a call Thursday at about 11:30 a.m., reporting the body of a woman in a parking lot at Surrey's Hi-Knoll Park, said Sgt. Jennifer Pound of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.

Ambulance, police and fire crews attended and the woman was declared dead on the scene.

Foul play was suspected, so the case was assigned to the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.

Pound addressed the media Friday afternoon under dark grey skies at 192 Street and Colebrook Road, about three blocks away from where the body was found. That stretch of Colebrook, near the Langley border, has large acreage properties on one side, with a large empty field on the other.

The victim had not yet been identified as of Thursday afternoon, Pound said.

"Our priority today is to do the neighbourhood canvassing, and No. 1 priority is to identify who this female is and why she's in this area," Pound said.

Surrey RCMP Corp. Bert Paquet says since January of this year, four other bodies have been found on Colebrook Road between 121st and 125A streets, at Surrey's western border with Delta.

This marks the 20th murder in Surrey, close to a 10-year record.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said last March closed-circuit cameras and special lighting would be installed along Colebrook Road after four bodies were dumped in the rural area in just six weeks. She said she was deeply concerned by the number of murders this year.

A spike in murders is believed to be part of a violent power struggle over the drug trade.

Surrounded by farmers’ fields and train tracks, Colebrook Road has few houses and witnesses, making it an ideal spot to dump murder victims.

dfumano@theprovince.com

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