B.C. Mounties say they have made an arrest in the murders of two Vancouver Island women.
RCMP officials will be providing an update on their investigation into the Duncan-area slayings of Karrie Ann Stone and Tyeshia Jones at a press conference Saturday, but CTV News has learned the alleged killer is William Gordon Robert Elliott, a young man with a criminal record for break and enter and breach of probation.
Duncan city councillor Joe Thorne told CTV News that he heard the news of the arrest from Jones's mother.
"I was very, very relieved. I had to leave the meeting I was in so I could go outside and basically cry," he said.
The murdered teen's mother is also feeling some sense of relief, he said, but she's also apprehensive.
"Finally after a year and a little bit, she's going to have the justice she's been waiting for, but at the same time she doesn't have her daughter," Thorne said.
"She's a little bit scared about what she's going to hear during the court period."
Jones was just 18 years old when she was killed in January 2011. Her body was discovered on Cowichan tribal lands seven days after she went missing on her way to meet a friend at a Duncan grocery store.
Investigators have not revealed how she died.
The badly burned body of 42-year-old Stone was discovered in an isolated wooded area southwest of Duncan on July 12, 2010, mere hours after her mother reported her missing. Her mother Bev told CTV News that her daughter had just finished a seven-month treatment program for drug addiction.
Police have not publicly made any connection between the two murders before now.