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While the RCMP and military continue to scour for the suspects and stave off internet sleuths, residents in Gillam and York Landing, Man. — the last two places where the alleged killers were spotted — say the global attention has shaken up daily life.

“It feels like a huge invasion, we’re at the end of the road,” said a Gillam resident who asked not to be named.

“It’s pretty quiet now, you don’t see too many kids outside. People are a bit on edge.”

Employees from the local co-op grocery store in Gillam were instructed by supervisors to not speak about the manhunt and residents have kept to themselves since a week ago, when the suspected murderers were spotted in the small, working-class, hydro town with about 1,250 people.

“It’s just a small community that got put in this situation,” said an employee at Power Town Auto in Gillam who asked not to be named.

“A couple weeks ago you could leave your keys in the car overnight and they’d still be there the next day … now everyone is locking their doors where they never used to.”

Several surrounding Indigenous communities have also felt the magnitude of the investigation, according to a member of the Bear Clan Patrol, an Indigenous-led neighbourhood watch group that was invited by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to help ease residents’ fears.

Photo by Royal Canadian Mounted Police / Reuters - handout

“Up here, all the towns and communities, they look like ghost towns. Like, everyone’s inside. There’s a high level of stress, anxiety and fearfulness because they’re being kept in their houses,” Wade Taylor, a Bear Clan Patrol volunteer from Winnipeg, told the Canadian Press.