Two men have been arrested in connection to the murder of Branson Sanders, a young B.C. man whose severely burned body was dumped in a Burnaby park late last year.
Nineteen-year-old Burnaby resident Shakib Shakib has now been charged with second-degree murder in connection to the homicide, and a murder charge is pending against a 19-year-old Surrey man, investigators announced Friday.
Twenty-year-old Sanders was found dead on Dec. 2 by a person walking their dog in Robert Burnaby Park, a wooded area south of Burnaby Lake and nearby the low-income housing complex where the victim grew up.
Investigators believe that Sanders was killed at a home in the 18000-block of 55 Avenue in Surrey and then dumped in the park. Police say there were likely several witnesses inside the house at the time of the murder, and they're pleading with those people to come forward.
Sanders friends and family described him as a smart, good-natured young man who began hanging out with a bad crowd after high school. Childhood friends say he had recently tried to reconnect with them and talked of returning to culinary school.
