The family of a Brampton, Ont. teen are devastated and looking for answers after he was found dead near a remote Saskatchewan community, a Toronto advocate says.
On May 13, Saskatchewan RCMP discovered human remains near Pelican Narrows, a community that is part of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, about 420 kilometres north of Saskatoon.
Police identified the remains as belonging to 16-year-old Jay’siiah Webb-Long, who went missing last March, says Shana McCalla, founder of Find Ontario Missing Black Boys, an initiative that shares information about missing kids online and helps families.
“Just the visceral grief that the family is experiencing right now, no family should experience something like this,” McCalla told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Thursday.
“We were definitely holding on to hope that we would locate Jay’Siiah and this news is an unimaginable loss.”
McCalla said the family is searching for answers on how the boy got to Saskatchewan — a place they have no connection to — and why he was there.
She said Webb-Long’s death is part of a crisis of missing Black boys in Ontario, which she hopes will be taken seriously through collaboration and action by various police services.
“How a child gets from Brampton to Pelican Narrows is baffling,” said McCalla, adding she believes someone facilitated his travel there as it would have been difficult for a child to get there alone.
“Josiah deserved a future, his family deserves answers and our community deserves an urgent response system when vulnerable youth are missing.”
McCalla said it’s concerning to see a child moved away from their family, home and the place they’ve grown up in. It’s a growing issue she’s noticed since starting her organization in 2024 and believes is flying under the radar.
There are systemic issues, such as law enforcement treating some kids as runaways or not coordinating with other jurisdictions, that hinder these investigations, she said.
The family believes these may have been factors in Webb-Long’s case, as his mother had limited contact with her son from March to May last year through social media, said McCalla.
Black boys are going missing across the GTA. This advocate is calling for systemic change
They believe Peel police were slow to investigate the disappearance due to that initial contact, she said.
“When a family says … this is out of character, this child has never been to this area, it should immediately raise the alarms for everybody,” she said.
Earlier this year, McCalla sent a brief to Ontario’s Solicitor General highlighting the issue of missing Black boys in the province, along with 15 recommendations. She says she has not spoken to him yet.
However, she said she’s spoken with police services across the GTA and hopes a joint task force or jurisdictional coordination will be created to look into the cases.
An investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate detailed concerns by advocates and found that missing boys from the GTA are travelling to northern Ontario to work in drug dens.
