Ontario man arrested, strip-searched after daughter draws gun

Jessie Sansone and daughter

I’ll level with you: I once drew a doodle of a gun as a schoolkid. (What can I say; James Bond and Perfect Dark were my thing.) I’m still annoyed that I got lectured about it by my teacher (because drawing something obviously means I’m going to do it in real life, right?), though in retrospect, I suppose I should count myself lucky that I didn’t accidentally get my parents arrested over it:

A Kitchener father is upset that police arrested him at his children’s’ school Wednesday, hauled him down to the station and strip-searched him, all because his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun at school.

“I’m picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I’m locked up,” Jessie Sansone, 26, said Thursday.

“I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school.”

The school principal, police and child welfare officials, however, all stand by their actions. They said they had to investigate to determine whether there was a gun in Sansone’s house that children had access to.

[…]

He said he went to the school Wednesday afternoon to pick up his three children. He was summoned to the principal’s office where three police officers were waiting. They said he was being charged with possession of a firearm.

He was escorted from the school, handcuffed and put in the back of a cruiser.

Hours later, after having been questioned without being given any answers of his own and strip-searched (because he must be carrying that illegal firearm up his rectum, I suppose, unless he swallowed it like I reckon all the real clever illegal-gun-owners do), he was finally released without having ever been charged.

Oh, and that gun the girl was allegedly talking about? Well, surprise, surprise:

After more interviews, police determined the weapon was likely a toy gun. After Sansone was released, he allowed police to search his home.

A partly transparent, plastic gun was eventually located. Stephanie Squires said the gun shoots small plastic pellets that look like “tiny purple candy gum balls.” However, there were never any pellets in the home. The gun had been left behind by her brother, who used to live with the family.

The article also notes that no-one, from school administrators to police officers, actually bothered to even take a look at the drawing that created all this panic. But why let such things as lack of any credible evidence get in the way of a perfectly good for teh children witch-hunt?

(via The Agitator)

Tags: Jessie Sansone • Kitchener, Ontario • toy guns