EDMONTON—Police in Edmonton say three people, including a 13-year-old, face first degree murder charges in connection with a pair of convenience store holdups that left two clerks dead.

Laylin Delorme, 24, Colton Steinhauer, 27, and the youth who can’t be named were arrested Friday morning.

Police identified one of the victims on Friday as Karanpal Singh Bhangu, 35.

On Saturday, they identified the second victim as Ricky Massin Cenabre, 41.

Police say the clerks were working alone at two separate stores and didn’t fight back when masked robbers walked in and shot them on Friday morning.

In addition to the murder charges, all three suspects face charges of robbery with a prohibited restricted firearm and being disguised with intent.

A police news release didn’t say when the suspects will appear in court to face the allegations.

Edmonton’s police chief said the community should be outraged after the two clerkswere shot dead for small amounts of cash.

“This was a barbaric and gratuitous act of violence upon two innocent persons resulting in a senseless loss of life,” Chief Rod Knecht said at a late-Friday afternoon news conference.

He went on to describe the crime as “over-the-top violence, absolutely unnecessary, gratuitous — evil.”

All three suspects have criminal records and were prohibited from possessing firearms, he said. He described the youth’s criminal past as violent.

A panic alarm call came from the business. When police couldn’t reach staff by phone, officers were dispatched.

Bhanguhad been shot in the stomach and was rushed to hospital, but died of his injuries.

About fifteen minutes after that alarm came in, a 911 call was made from another Mac’s store. A delivery man had found a trail of blood leading to a storage room.

It’s believed the clerk at that store had been shot in the front and dragged to the back area, said Knecht.

Cenabre was pronounced dead at the scene.

In both cases, the culprits made off with cash. Knecht said there would have been small amounts of money in the registers, as convenience stores typically put most of their sales in floor safes and armoured cars pick up the bulk each day.

Using video camera footage from the stores, police next dispatched a description of the masked suspects and their clothing. And because the targeted locations were both Mac’s, officers were tasked with checking in on other stores.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

A short time later, officers spotted them in a stolen vehicle near another Mac’s, which led to a brief chase along Whitemud Drive, a major city freeway. It ended underneath an overpass when the suspect vehicle crashed into a guardrail.

Knecht said investigators have made a possible link between the suspects and other recent robberies. It’s unclear why the crimes escalated. Surveillance video shows the two victims were passive and co-operative.

“I would suggest they did not expect to be executed,” he said.

Staff members at a private school where Bhangu’s wife, Kiran, worked as a teacher quickly set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for her and the couple’s 6-year-old son, Royce.

David Eifert, principal of Progressive Academy, said the woman emigrated from India four years earlier. Three months ago, her husband and son were permitted to join her.

Eifert said he didn’t know much about Bhangu except that within a short time of arriving in Canada, he got a job.

“I stood beside him at the school Christmas performance last night and I was going to talk to him afterwards and they left,” Eifert said. “He was obviously going to work.”

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan said he has asked to meet with the province’s labour minister to discuss the crime and push for tougher legislation to better protect vulnerable, night-shift retail workers, who are often young people and immigrants.

“This is not the first time that retail workers have faced violence and it certainly won’t be the last,” he said.

He wants to see Alberta follow regulations in place in British Columbia, where employers must have more than one night person on duty or keep lone staffers in locked areas and behind barriers. Manitoba also has similar legislation.

McGowan said the Alberta government promised to beef up safety measures in 2000, when 25-year-old Tara McDonald was bludgeoned to death while working at night in a Subway sandwich shop in Calgary.

Read more about: