Murder plot suspect had no contact with Geneva police

Until they got a call from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Geneva police officers hadn't heard the name Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath. The 23-year-old Geneva woman has been charged in a foiled plot to kill as many people as possible at a Halifax shopping mall on Valentine's Day.

“We've had no contact with the suspect,” Geneva Cmdr. Eric Passarelli said Saturday. “She's completely unknown.”

He said he doesn't know how long Souvannarath has lived in Geneva, or where she might have worked or attended high school. Canadian police officials arrested Souvannarath at the Halifax, Canada, airport and say she confessed to being part of the plot.

Souvannarath and Randall Steven Shepherd, a 20-year-old from Halifax, were both charged with conspiracy to commit murder, according to The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Nova Scotia. They are due in court Tuesday morning.

On Friday, Geneva police executed a search warrant at Souvannarath's home about 6:20 p.m. Multiple items were taken from the home, but police would not reveal what items were seized at the request of Canadian authorities.

“The family has been extremely cooperative,” Passarelli said. “The home is not a crime scene.”

Passarelli said the threat was contained to Canada.

“It does seem to be an incident isolated to Canada,” he said. “There is no threat to this area.”

Authorities do not believe the suspects had links to terrorist groups, but they had planned “a very serious plot that would have injured a lot of people,” Passarelli said.

A third person taken into custody, a male 17-year-old from Cole Harbour, was released overnight. Investigators have determined he was a person of interest, but have not leveled charges against him.

They also are investigating a 19-year-old male suspect who shot himself to death after police surrounded his home, a senior Canadian police official told The Associated Press.

The official said that police acted quickly after receiving information from the public on the Crime Stoppers tip line. The official spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Police said the dead man and the Geneva woman had planned to kill themselves after committing the shootings. The woman told police she had prepared a number of pronouncements to be tweeted after her death.

The official said the suspects used a chat stream and were apparently obsessed with death and had many photos of mass killings. Canadian Justice Minister Peter MacKay said the plot was not related to international terrorism.

“This appeared to be a group of murderous misfits that were coming here, or were living here, and prepared to wreak havoc and mayhem on our community,” MacKay said. “It would have been devastating. Mass casualties were a real possibility.”

At the home of the male suspect, police saw two people leave the house who they determined were his parents and pulled them over on a traffic check. They then called the suspect.

The man told police that he didn't have any guns, but shot himself as he was on his way out of the house, the official said. The official said police worked with Canadian border officials to find the female suspect on her flight as she was making her way from Chicago.

Police said they arrested Shepherd and Souvannarath about 2 a.m. Friday at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport. Police arrested the 17-year-old at a home shortly after 11 a.m. Friday.

Daily Herald staff writers Sara Hooker, Susan Sarkauskas and Steve Zalusky, and Associated Press contributed.