Three of the Fifteen Counts Are Possessing a Firearm While Prohibited, and the Accused Is Thirteen Years Old: Durham Police Take a Loaded Restricted Firearm Out of an Ajax Hotel and the Boy Was Already Barred From Touching One (September 11, 2026)

AJAX — The call that brought Durham Regional Police to a hotel near Westney Road South and Bayly Street West on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 was logged as unknown trouble, which is the phrase a service uses when the person on the line has not said what is wrong. West Division officers arrived and found a 13-year-old boy holding a knife. They arrested him, searched the property with the help of the K9 Unit, and found a firearm. It was loaded, and it was restricted.

Durham Regional Police published the file on Friday, September 11, 2026, two days later. The charge sheet runs to fifteen counts, and six of them have nothing to do with the gun or the knife. They are breaches — two of a release order, four of a probation order — which means that before any officer walked into that hotel, this 13-year-old was already carrying two separate sets of court conditions, and one of them was a weapons prohibition.

Three Prohibition Counts, Not One

Possessing a firearm while prohibited is a count that cannot be laid against a person with a clean record. It requires a pre-existing court order. Durham Regional Police state plainly that the boy was bound by multiple release orders at the time of arrest, including a weapons prohibition order, so the count is accounted for — but it is laid three times.

A single gun found in a single search does not ordinarily generate three identical prohibition counts. Three counts are consistent with three separate orders, each one independently breached by the same act of possession. The service does not say that, and no such claim is attributed to it here. It is what the count structure suggests, and nothing more.

The same reading applies to the breach counts. Two fail-to-comply-with-release-order counts and four fail-to-comply-with-probation-order counts sit on the sheet alongside the weapons charges. Probation and a release order are different instruments, arising from different stages of different proceedings. A 13-year-old carrying both at once has already been through more than one file.

The Word Loaded, and the Word Restricted

The release does not give a make, a model, a calibre or a magazine capacity, and it does not say how many rounds were in the weapon. What it gives is the pair of words that matter legally: loaded and restricted. A restricted firearm in Canada is, in practice, a handgun or a short-barrelled long gun. Loaded removes any argument that what was recovered was stored, transported or inert.

There is also an unauthorized possession of a prohibited device count, which is the count used for an over-capacity magazine or a silencer, among other items. Durham Regional Police do not say which device was seized, and nothing in the release identifies it.

The knife is not itemised separately in the seizure. The boy is described as armed with it when officers arrived, and the two counts of possessing a weapon dangerous to the public peace are the likely home for it, though the release does not make that allocation explicit.

A Hotel, a K9 Unit, and No Occurrence Number

The firearm was not on the boy. It was found in a search of the premises after his arrest, and the DRPS K9 Unit assisted with that search — a detail that indicates the weapon was concealed somewhere officers were not going to find by walking the floor. Where in the hotel it was recovered is not published. Whether the boy was a registered guest, was in someone else’s room, or was in a common area is not published either.

The file is with the West Division Criminal Investigation Branch. No project name is attached, no specialized firearms or guns-and-gangs unit is named, and no officer is quoted anywhere in the release. Durham Regional Police published no occurrence number for this file, which is a departure from the force’s usual practice and leaves the incident without a public identifier.

What Is Not Reported

No name, and none is permitted — the accused cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. No hotel name and no street address, only the intersection. No time of day for the September 9 call. No description of the unknown trouble that produced it, and no statement of who called. No account of what the boy was doing with the knife or whether it was pointed at anyone. No firearm make, model, calibre, round count or serial status, and no statement of whether it was traced or reported stolen. No identification of the prohibited device. No detail on what the underlying probation and release orders were imposed for, by which court, or when. No bail outcome. No occurrence number. No other person arrested, and no indication that anyone else was present.

Durham Regional Police name no gang, no street group, no criminal organization and no motorcycle club in this file, and none is named here. A 13-year-old with a loaded restricted firearm invites that inference, and the force does not make it. Neither does this briefing. The file qualifies on the facts of the offence alone: a loaded restricted firearm recovered from an accused already under a weapons prohibition.

The accused is presumed innocent and cannot be identified. Nothing described above has been tested in court.