Canadian man arrested and strip-searched after 4-year-old daughter drew picture of gun at school

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



“From a public safety point of view, any child drawing a picture of guns and saying there’s guns in a home would warrant some further conversation with the parents and child,” said Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Children’s Services. Sansone thinks police overreacted. He didn’t find out until hours after his arrest what had actually sparked the incident. He said he went to the school on 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. At the police station, Sansone talked to a lawyer who said only that he was being charged with possession of a firearm.

He was given a blanket and told he would appear before a judge in the morning to post bail. “I was getting pretty scared at that point,” Sansone said. “It seemed like I was actually being charged at this point.” He was forced to remove his clothes for a full strip search. Several hours later, a detective apologized and said he was being released with no charges, Sansone said. The detective told him that his four-year-old daughter had drawn a picture of a man holding a gun. When a teacher asked her who the man was, the girl replied, “That’s my daddy’s. He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters.” “To be honest with you, I broke down,” Sansone said. “My character got put down so much. I was actually really hurt, like it could happen that easy.”


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After he was released, Sansone was asked to sign a paper authorizing a search of his home. “I just think they blew it out of proportion,’’ Sansone's wife, Stephanie Squires said. “It was for absolutely nothing. They searched our house upside down and found nothing. They had the assumption he owned a firearm. The way everything happened was completely unnecessary, especially since we know the school very well. I don’t understand how they came to that conclusion from a four-year-old’s drawing.’’ The school principal, Steve Zack, said a staff member called child welfare officials because the law requires them to report anything involving the safety or neglect of a child. The agency chose to involve police, he said. “Police chose to arrest Jessie here. Nobody wants something like this to happen at any time, especially not at school. But that’s out of my hands.”