‘You can’t just get out’: How 2 boys were recruited into the drug trade at the age of 12

Kai was 12 years old when he began to warn his mother he might not make it home. 

“[If] I don’t make it home by four o’clock, just know that I got snatched and somebody put me in their car and kidnapped me,” he would tell her.

His mother, whom CBC’s the fifth estate is calling Aria for her protection, moved her family to another city when Kai was a boy to disconnect from his father, who had a criminal past and street associations.

She enrolled Kai, whose name has also been changed for his protection, in community centres and drop-in spaces in Winnipeg to keep him busy and away from trouble

But Aria believes those spaces exposed her son to people who would exploit him. 

• Watch the full documentary, “Missing Boys: Lured into Danger,” from the fifth estate on YouTube or CBC-TV on Friday at 9 p.m.

She believes some staff abused their positions, allowing gang members to manipulate her son and coerce him into the drug trade — sending him thousands of kilometres away from home. 

Kai said men in their 20s and 30s presented themselves as people he could trust.

“People call it grooming, people call it using. There’s many words for it, but it’s just being taken advantage of because you’re innocent,” Kai said.

For the last two years, the fifth estate has investigated the disappearances of young Black boys from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who are groomed and lured into drug trafficking networks in Ontario cities as far away as Sarnia and Thunder Bay, and sent further north into Indigenous communities like Ginoogaming, a First Nation.

Now, the fifth estate has heard directly from boys who live this dangerous life and say they were sent across the country to sell drugs, revealing a network that reaches even farther. 

We now know of this activity taking boys as young as 12 as far west as British Columbia, as far north as Yellowknife and as far east as Halifax — places where drugs are sold at exponentially higher prices — up to 10 times the price in some cases. 

The business of going OT

In an interview with CBC’s the fifth estate, Kai recounts his first trip out of town, also known as “going OT,” when he was 12.

“You don’t know what’s in those bags. You don’t know what you’re delivering for people … you just think, ‘I’m helping the older guy, because I want to be cool like him,'” he said.

Kai said the older men picked him up, told him where he would stay and expected him to sell drugs. He was left in a remote community eight hours north of his home in Winnipeg. 

LISTEN: The Missing Boys: When It All Went Wrong

Kai said he did not fully understand what he was getting into. He had to figure it out in a place where he did not know anyone and his family was out of reach. 

“You’re not telling family members,” he said. “Because not only do they not know where you are, you don’t know where you are.”

The first trip taught him more about what he calls the rules of “the game,” where the three outcomes are freedom, jail or death.

And he says he was forced to gamble for the gangs.

“You can’t just get out … whoever sent you there is expecting you to come back with a prize,” Kai said. “And if you don’t come back with anything … God forbid something happens to you.“

Now 14, Kai has made more trips out of town than he can count. 

Jamal, another teenager whose name has been changed for his safety, started going OT at 12. He had been away from home for more than a week and his mom reported him missing.

The now-18-year-old who lives in the Toronto area said he has been sent to communities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. 

Jamal’s farthest trip took him to Yellowknife. He was even convinced to pay his own way.

Like Kai, Jamal said it was in Grade 7 when he was first approached to work for a gang. His family had spent a year bouncing between houses and he grew close to older people in his neighbourhood who were often around his cousins.

“I always just had the respect and looked at them like an older role model,” he said. 

Jamal said those role models could offer him an escape from the instability at home. 

“If things were stable at home, I wouldn’t really have a reason to go outside,” he said. 

Jamal said the adults he worked for were selling drugs bought internationally — and worked with cartels. 

Then Jamal tells the fifth estate how the boys cross the country — a key piece of information — as many families are baffled as to how their boys are boarding planes and driving to remote locations when they are too young to have a driver’s licence and don’t have identification. 

Jamal said fake names and identification are provided for them. 

“It doesn’t even matter who you are, how young you are. You can go anywhere in Canada,” he said. “It’s actually quite easy.”

The adults behind the operation

The fifth estate previously found adult traffickers use the boys as disposable mules and legal shields that often take the fall when police make drug busts.

A 2026 federal Justice Department report found that the proportion of Black youth in correctional supervision in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia remained at around 12 to 13 per cent from 2019 to 2024. That’s almost two times more than their combined share of the population for that age group, across all four provinces.

Black boys often face well-known socio-economic challenges including high unemployment, and bias within justice and educational systems that can make them more vulnerable to the pull of organized crime. 

“Many of these youth[s] are exploited … they’re seen as disposable to the people who are running these networks,” said Winnipeg police Insp. Josh Ewatski. 

In May, Ewatski led a team involved in what police called Manitoba’s largest drug bust. Investigators seized 525 kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl in Winnipeg. 

Those arrested included people associated with Canada’s highest ranks of organized crime including the Hells Angels, Wolfpack Alliance and a Mexican cartel. 

“Most of the drugs of cocaine and methamphetamine will come from Mexico up to the U.S. and into Canada,” Ewatski said. 

He described a sophisticated network where multiple drug trafficking organizations are working together to move drugs into remote communities. 

He says it’s associates of these international criminal networks who are recruiting and using boys.

Ewatski said boys are used for street-level dealing and to work in stash houses. He said they often don’t know who they are working for.

“These kids are used so [those running the networks] don’t have to expose themselves to being arrested or being shot.”

Leaving a gang can be just as dangerous. Ewatski said some boys become trapped by debts they are told they owe their recruiters. 

“If they’re out, they’re going to be out in a violent way,” he said. “Possibly even dead.”

Denny Heathen spent much of his 20s working for a gang in Prince Albert, Sask. He said some recruiters targeted boys between 15 to 18 and told us that the boys who were targeted had a look of desperation.

“They wanted purpose,” Heathen said. 

Recruiters offered attention, money and the promise of protection, presenting themselves as brothers or older mentors.

“These are puppets,” he said. “You just got to make them feel like they’re appreciated, like they are going to be taken care of.”

Kai remembers the grooming process well.

“You’re a little kid in a community centre trying to play basketball and then you see these guys … walking around with the large prize in their hand.”

The prize was money — an amount that felt impossible to a boy too young to get his first job.

During his interview with the fifth estate, Kai pulled out a thick stack of $100 bills to demonstrate how quickly money could influence a boy to sell drugs.

“All it takes is this and you’re influenced.” 

He said the amounts involved can be enormous in First Nations communities where an oxycodone pill can sell for $200. 

“That substance that is being put in these boys’ pockets and these boys’ hands to go deal over the province … people will do anything for.”

The boy who never came home

On March 27, 2025, Jay’siiah Webb-Long walked out of his family’s home in Brampton, Ont., carrying a single duffel bag that appeared nearly empty. 

Doorbell camera footage provided by the family to the fifth estate shows the 15-year-old placing a single box in the recycling bin on his front porch, scanning the street before disappearing out of frame. 

His story made national headlines. 

“Somebody had sent me photos after his disappearance,” said Shenice Long, his mother. 

“She had sent photos of him holding stacks of money. So, at that point, I said, ‘OK, somebody has sent him far out … to make money.'”

Long said she remained in contact with her son for weeks after he left home. But he would not tell her where he was. 

Jay’siiah’s family told the fifth estate they are frustrated with action from Peel Regional Police and the RCMP in Saskatchewan, citing for example that it took Peel police eight weeks to alert the public that Jay’siiah was missing. 

Long said police used a phone number she never had for her son to trace his location to Pelican Narrows, Sask., a northern community about 3,000 kilometres from his home in Brampton. This number only surfaced when the public alert came out and a young woman came forward. 

“I heard of Saskatchewan, but … I don’t have family there. I don’t know anyone there,” Long said.

In July 2025, Saskatchewan RCMP took over the file as a homicide investigation. They didn’t alert the public of this shift until September 2025. 

Police told the family a search was delayed by winter weather. In the spring, investigators told the family they planned to search near Pelican Narrows — led with cadaver dogs.

On May 13, human remains were found near a sewage lagoon just outside the community. An autopsy confirmed two days later that the remains belonged to Webb-Long. 

RCMP believe his death was a homicide. The investigation is ongoing and no charges have been laid in connection with his death. 

Missing — and not always reported

In 2024, 322 male youth were reported missing to Toronto police. Statistics Canada data shows Black boys account for almost half of those missing, despite representing less than 10 per cent of the city’s population of that age group.

The fifth estate has found not every family reports their youth missing. In the case of Jay’siiah Webb-Long, his mother didn’t file a formal report until three weeks after he had left home. She told the fifth estate she had called Peel Regional Police after 48 hours but they dissuaded her because she was still in contact with him. 

“One youth missing is too [many],” said Christene Lewis, who is a violence intervention specialist and works with families in Toronto and surrounding areas. She supports many families who have youth that go missing and go “OT.” It’s a life she knows because she lived it. 

“I come from the gang culture,” Lewis said. “I come from feeling isolated, I’ve come from feeling like the streets were more loyal to me than my own family was.”

Lewis said some parents hesitate reporting their child missing because they fear their kids will be treated as runaways rather than young people at risk. Others feel shame and embarrassment. 

Lewis said there is also a breakdown of trust between marginalized communities and police. 

“They don’t feel like the police even care.”

Lewis’s advice to parents: Always report a missing kid and keep following up.

“If they didn’t hear you the first day, call the next day,” she said. “Don’t give up.”

Aria remembers when it first became clear her son had gone to a First Nations community to sell drugs.

“He was telling stories like he came back from camp,” she said.

He would leave home sporadically, returning home with designer clothing and money.

Aria said she has also had the windows of her home shot at three times. 

Now, when Kai goes missing, she reports him and collects evidence that might help police locate him.

“This is not something you make peace with,” she said. “This is something that’s wrong.”

‘Nobody’s just going to let you go’

Jamal said the people who recruited him continue to contact him and tell him he owes them money.

”They’re going to keep texting you, telling you that they got this opportunity … nobody’s just going to let you just go.”

Kai has also tried to leave. He spent the summer away at camp and returned determined to get out of gang life. 

“Now that I realize what kind of hell on earth is like … I never want to go back there,” he told the fifth estate in August.

But Aria said the messages continued. 

She found text messages about Kai from a sibling that read: “I will not be returning your little bro” and “he’s my slave.”

She believes the messages are proof her son is being trafficked. 

Kai left home again the night before he was set to start Grade 10. He returned home and left again several times.

Aria fears that even if Kai manages to break free from the gangs, they will continue to chase and manipulate him, tempting him with money and a sense of belonging. 

Kai is facing drug trafficking charges. 

“This monster exists and it’s going to exist on his path as a young man, as an adult,” Aria said. “I don’t think that this monster ever goes away.”