Incident near Round Lake leaves communities on edge

Communities in the Round Lake area were on edge all day Friday after news of what happened just down the road broke.

The incident in the early hours of Friday morning appears to have taken place at a section of Range Road 637. There was a heavy police presence in that area Friday after one man was found dead and a woman was injured after three men broke into a nearby home.

The suspects were said to have fled the scene and have yet to been found.

With Round Lake nearby, people in those communities took the necessary precautions.

The Ochapowace First Nation set up security barriers outside of its reserve to ensure nobody unwanted was getting through and people in Bird’s Point voluntarily hunkered down for the day.

Kimberly Van Dorpe, the general manager for the Lakeside Grill and Tavern in Bird’s Point, said she didn’t open her business Friday because of the threat the suspects could’ve posed for her staff and customers.

“My mother-in-law sent me a news article and then my kid sent me an article. We talked to our cooks here and everybody had heard about it,” she explained. “We decided for safety and our patrons and staff, our best choice was to keep it locked down for today.”

At the restaurant, they put up signs saying they were closed. It was a sign of the times in the community.

(Shane Clausing/980 CJME)

The situation was extra stressful for Summer Delorme. She’s a waitress at the bar, but went into work to figure out the situation they were dealing with.

Her child was home sick from school for the day, but things were still stressful for her. While her husband was able to watch her son as Delorme went to work, she would’ve been in a tough situation had her husband not been there.

“If his dad wasn’t there, usually I’d bring him to work with me,” she explained, “In a situation like this, I wouldn’t even think to come around here with my child.”

While it was said to be a busy scene nearby on Friday morning, both Delorme and Van Dorpe said they didn’t see a police car drive through their community.

They also weren’t notified on their phones about the situation, which Van Dorpe says was frustrating.

“It’s a little frustrating because I do like to give patrons a lot of notice before we decide not to open,” she said.

Delorme agreed with that statement.

“It helps,” she stated. “Getting (an alert) on your phone personally, you know immediately and you can make your own personal decision for what I need to do today to keep me and my family safe.”

As for others in the town, one woman said she learned about the incident from her son in Saskatoon.

As for some in nearby Stockholm and Esterhazy, some said they heard about the incident on the news, but some had no idea it was even going on just a couple kilometres from where they lived.