Halifax police have charged Loretta Saunders' roommates with murder a day after the pregnant university student's body was found on the side of a highway in New Brunswick.

Victoria Henneberry, 28, and Blake Leggette, 25, face charges of first-degree murder and are scheduled to appear in Halifax provincial court Friday.

"We are hopeful that these charges will bring some sense of closure to Loretta's family and friends," police said. "We extend our sincere sympathies to them."

Henneberry and Leggette were charged earlier with stealing Saunders' 2000 Toyota Celica, which was found Feb. 19 in Harrow, Ont., south of Windsor.

Saunders' remains were found at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday in the median off Route 2 of the Trans-Canada Highway, west of Moncton, N.B. She had disappeared from Halifax two weeks earlier.

The 26-year-old Saint Mary's University student was last seen on the morning of Feb. 13 in the Cowie Hill Road area of the city.

To drive from Halifax to Harrow, Ont. — where police found her car and arrested Mr. Leggette and Ms. Henneberry — the usual route would be to link with the Trans-Canada Highway near Truro, N.S., then stay on the Trans-Canada heading northwest toward Moncton.

It's about a three-hour drive to where Ms. Saunders' body was found. It's a 21-hour drive to Harrow.

Police said Wednesday that they consider her death a homicide and have identified suspects. They said they anticipate further charges and are not looking for any suspects.

Const. Pierre Bourdages of Halifax Regional Police said Saunders's body is at the medical examiner's office in Saint John, N.B., to undergo an autopsy in the coming days. He said many pieces of information led police to the location close to the highway.

"The body was not found by a bystander, she wasn't found by someone driving in the area," he said. "The information that is before us helped us narrow down the area."

At a news conference Tuesday, her boyfriend said he last saw her while she was leaving his home to check on an apartment that he said she was subletting to Leggette and Henneberry.

Police say Leggette, Henneberry and Saunders knew each other, but wouldn't expand on the relationship.

Members of Saunders's family travelled to Halifax to make public appeals for help in finding the young Inuit woman, who was originally from Labrador.

Delilah Terriak has said her sister was set to graduate from university in May. She was studying criminology and sociology and she had been working on a thesis on missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada, focusing on three Nova Scotia cases.

The Coast Salish Territory/Vancouver ­B.C. First Nations leaders released a statement on Saunders's death, re-iterating the importance of her research.

"Aboriginal people from across the country are mourning the loss of this bright young scholar. She was courageous enough to step outside the box with her plans to study this dark and disturbing topic," the statement read.

"Every First Nation in B.C. identifies with this case and knows firsthand the great sorrow of losing one of their daughters, mothers or aunts to senseless violence and death. Canadians should be outraged by the senseless death of Loretta Saunders."

The First Nations leaders are calling for a national inquiry into the deaths of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Darryl Leroux, her thesis supervisor, earlier hailed her as a smart and passionate student.

"Loretta is a uniquely brilliant student the likes of whom don't come around often. I had never felt more inspired and proud of a student. We discussed her thesis project, which she had carefully presented in a proposal that was the best written project I had ever read in seven years of university teaching," he said.

She had a "passion for supporting indigenous youth [to] overcome the many barriers they face."