He Was Under a Weapons Prohibition, on a Release Order and Driving on a Novice Licence, and the Gun in the Car Had Its Serial Number Filed Off: Durham Police Charge Donovan Wendt, 34, After a Bowmanville Traffic Stop (September 16, 2026)

BOWMANVILLE — It was a quarter to four in the afternoon and the stop was not about a gun. Durham Regional Police say members of the East Division Community Response Unit were on proactive patrol on Tuesday, September 15, 2026 when they pulled a vehicle over in the area of Liberty Street South and Lake Road. Speaking to the driver, officers saw signs of impairment and made a roadside breath demand; he registered a fail on the approved screening device and was arrested on that basis. Searching him, they found drugs. Searching the car, they found a loaded firearm with its serial number altered. The force says that at the moment of his arrest the man was already bound by a weapons prohibition. Donovan Wendt, 34, of Oshawa now faces ten counts, six of them firearms offences.

The release went out on Wednesday, September 16, a day after the stop. It runs to a few hundred words and publishes the accused’s name in bold, which is more than many Durham releases do. What it does not publish is almost everything a reader would need to size the seizure.

Three Classes of Restriction, All Running at Once

The charge sheet describes a man operating under three separate legal constraints simultaneously, and the release states each one without drawing the line between them.

The first is the weapons prohibition. Durham says plainly that the accused “was bound by a weapons prohibition” at the time of arrest, and the count of possessing a firearm while prohibited follows from it. The force does not say when the order was imposed, by which court, for how long, or what it arose from — whether it is a discretionary order under section 110, a mandatory one under section 109, or a lifetime prohibition.

The second is the release order. A separate count alleges failure to comply with one, which means he was already before the courts on some other matter and subject to conditions when the stop happened. The release does not identify that matter, the issuing court, the conditions breached, or whether the outstanding file is itself a firearms file.

The third is the driver’s licence. The count of novice driver above zero blood alcohol content is a Highway Traffic Act offence that applies to G1, G2, M1 and M2 holders, for whom the permitted blood alcohol level is nil. It is charged here against a 34-year-old. The combination is not illegal — a novice licence has no upper age limit — but it is the reason this stop escalated at all. On a full licence, a reading below 0.05 produces no offence and, in the ordinary course, no arrest; without an arrest there is no search incident to it, and without the search the firearm stays in the vehicle.

The Filed Serial Number

Of the six firearms counts, the one that says the most about the gun is the altered serial number. Every firearm lawfully manufactured for or imported into Canada carries a serial number, and that number is what ties a weapon to an owner, a registration and a point of entry. Removing or defacing it is a separate Criminal Code offence precisely because it severs the gun from its own history.

Durham publishes the count and nothing else. The release does not say whether the firearm was a handgun or a long gun, whether it was restricted or prohibited, what calibre it was, how many rounds it held, whether the magazine was oversized, whether the weapon was reported stolen, or whether it has been sent for tracing. It confirms only that it was loaded and that it was in the vehicle. The service does not state whether the firearm is believed to be a domestic diversion, a cross-border import or a privately manufactured weapon, and no such claim is made here.

What Is Not Reported

No occurrence number — unusual for a Durham release, which commonly carries one. No drug is identified: two counts of possessing a Schedule I substance are laid, but the release says only “a quantity of drugs,” with no substance named, no weight, no packaging described, no cash, no scale, no phone, and no trafficking count. No court date. No description of the vehicle and no mention of any passenger. No firearm description of any kind. No statement of whether the accused has a prior record beyond the two orders already named.

And no gang, street gang, criminal organization or outlaw motorcycle club has been named by the Durham Regional Police Service in this file. None is named or implied here, and no profile page on this site is linked, because none has been alleged by police.

The investigating officer is Cst. Walker of the East Division Community Response Unit, reachable at 1-888-579-1520 ext. 2411. Durham Regional Crime Stoppers takes anonymous information at 1-800-222-8477.

These allegations have yet to be proven in court.