The family of a teenager killed after tracking down his missing cellphone is preparing to break their silence as one suspect is confirmed dead and the hunt for two other men continues.

Jeremy Cook, 18, was killed in the early morning hours of June 14 after using an app to track the phone he’d left in a cab — leading to a deadly confrontation in a northeast London parking lot.

As police sought a trio of suspects, a nationwide arrest warrant was issued for Muhab Sultanaly Sultan, a 23-year-old who it was confirmed Tuesday drowned in Ottawa’s Rideau River while fleeing from an encounter with police there.

The drawn-out investigation — questions over who pulled the trigger; the search for Sultan; the process of naming him as the drowned man — has made the mourning period even more painful for Cook’s family, one friend says.

“It’s the unknown,” Maureen DiIorio told The Free Press Tuesday. “It won’t be easy. It will never be easy. It will never be easy again.”

DiIorio declined further comment, noting the Cook family, silent since their son’s death, is preparing a public statement.

A Brampton native, Cook, a hockey buff and high school honours student, had moved to London to study carpentry. Police say he used an app to track his missing cellphone on June 14.

At 5:15 a.m., he arrived in a parking lot on Highbury Avenue and approached a silver car with three men inside, police say. One man left during the conversation about the phone, police say.

When the driver started leaving, Cook grabbed onto the car, police say. Shots were fired and Cook was found dead behind a plaza at Highbury and Huron Street.

A warrant was issued for Sultan — and the search flared up in Ottawa last week, when a man tried to run down a pair of police officers on bicycles June 24 before jumping into the Rideau River in an ill-fated escape attempt.

Tuesday, investigators confirmed the body pulled Saturday from the water belonged to Sultan. Attempts to reach his father, Sultan Sultan of Calgary, were unsuccessful.

While the drowning ends the London police probe into Sultan, they remain on the hunt for the second person who was in the vehicle at the time of the shooting. Investigators still don’t know that suspect’s identity.

There was a third man, who police say left the car just before the shooting. They’re searching for him, too.

“We’re obviously looking to the public and anyone who can lead us to these other two people,” Const. Amanda Corsaut said Tuesday.

Anyone with information is asked to call London police at 519-661-5670 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

In an online statement, DiIorio, the Cook family friend, said the slain man’s loved ones “are coping, but barely” and “hanging by the thinnest of threads.”

She also thanked those who have donated to an online fundraising campaign that wrapped up Monday having raised $39,000.

“We are closing this campaign today and wish that each and every one of you take a moment to hug your children today, tomorrow and always,” DiIorio wrote.

patrick.maloney@sunmedia.ca

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