“He’s surrendering. Police are instructing him how and what to do.”
Those words, posted on Facebook last Thursday night, Feb. 19, were the first sign that the dramatic manhunt-turned-standoff involving Jonas Budd was about to end peacefully.
Budd, a murder and kidnapping suspect, had been holed up in a Sturgeon Landing home for up to 20 hours. At about 10:30 pm Thursday, police arrested him “without incident,” as they put it.
Budd, 43, now faces seven charges, including first-degree murder and kidnapping with a weapon. He was scheduled to make his first court appearance today in La Ronge.
Budd is accused of abducting Kayla Natomagan, 17, from a home in Lac La Ronge, a northeastern Saskatchewan reserve, shortly after 3 am last Wednesday, Feb. 18.
He is also accused of shooting to death Dustin Bird, 17, who was inside the home. Media reports identified Bird as Natomagan’s boyfriend.
Shortly before noon on Wednesday, Mounties located Natomagan “safe and sound,” but they believed Budd had fled on foot into the bush in the area of Cranberry Portage.
As the ensuing manhunt unfolded, Budd’s sister, Joyce Budd, shared her knowledge of the situation on Facebook.
Before posting that Jonas would soon surrender, Joyce wrote that the RCMP were going to let her talk to him if he
didn’t turn himself in by
6 pm Thursday. That evidently did not happen.
In one post, Joyce was fearful for her brother’s life.
“I know they just want him dead,” she wrote, adding that her brother had released “a letter to surrender.”
With Jonas holed up in the small, brown home – it once belonged to his father and is now owned by his brother, according to Joyce – the standoff made national headlines.
Jonas’s arrest brought immense relief to Joyce.
“End of it. My brother is in custody,” she wrote around
11 pm Thursday. “Thank you for the support to many family and friends and friends of Jonas’s and new friends made through this difficult time.”
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In addition to first-degree murder and kidnapping, Jonas faces charges of pointing a weapon, possessing a dangerous weapon, possessing a firearm while prohibited, breaking and entering, and uttering threats.
It is not clear how close Jonas was to Cranberry Portage or Sturgeon Landing, 70 km to the southwest, when he entered the bush on foot.
APTN reported it this way: “Budd released [Natomagan] in Manitoba, just across the provincial boundary, and then fled several kilometres back into Saskatchewan on foot and through the bush to Sturgeon Landing.”
Joyce told CKOM News that Jonas arrived in Sturgeon Landing around 2 am Thursday, some 20 hours before his arrest.
While police did not release operational details around the manhunt and standoff, Joyce wrote that Mounties used “planes, vehicles and snowmobiles” and even an “Artillery vehicle.”
Police said Budd is the estranged common-law partner of Natomagan’s mother, Erica Hennie. Hennie had a restraining order against Budd, the community’s chief told APTN.
As for Natomagan, now reunited with her family in Lac La Ronge, she is “trying to be strong” but is “shaken up” and “traumatized,” Hennie tearfully told the StarPhoenix.
Police have not said whether Natomagan was found inside a residence or a vehicle when she parted ways with Jonas, who according to the StarPhoenix now lives in Thompson.
When he left Lac La Ronge, Budd was believed to be driving a 2001 GMC Sierra pick-up truck. Cranberry Portage is a 450-km drive from Lac La Ronge.
Though Jonas “has lots to answer for,” Joyce wrote that she will be “supporting him.”
