Y’know this could NOT happen , IF parents kept an closer eye on their children!
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14-year-old boy held in jail after being nabbed with explosives:

PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2004.09.28
EDITION: Final
SECTION: City
PAGE: C3
BYLINE: Greg McArthur
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen

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14-year-old boy held in jail all weekend after being nabbed with
explosives: Teen says he only wanted to try to make homemade fireworks

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Cornwall police handcuffed a 14-year-old boy and locked him up for three
nights for carrying explosive substances in his backpack — substances
that were supposed to be used for homemade fireworks, the teen says.

The boy’s father was furious, he said, after police refused to release
his son from a Cornwall youth detention centre all weekend, and
yesterday placed the boy in an adult jail at the Cornwall courthouse
while he sought bail in an adult court.

“I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to get up and bang the table and
say he did nothing wrong,” the father said. “It just seems too much to
me.

“I’m not sure he actually committed an offence.”

The boy has no criminal record. He cannot be identified because of
provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. He was charged with
possessing an explosive substance without lawful excuse, a crime that
carries a maximum sentence of five years.

Const. Larry Campeau, the officer who signed the indictment against the
boy, could not be reached for comment.

It all started on Friday night. With his parents out of town at a wine
festival near St. Catharines, the teen opened up the locked area where
his father keeps his hunting guns. He took a cylinder of gun powder, the
size of a small water bottle, as well as a jar of gasoline and a can of
spray paint.

The plan, he says, was for him and two friends to go to a nearby forest
– located next to Ecole Marie-Tanguay and popular for its bike paths
and bush parties — to make fireworks from scratch.

They didn’t have instructions. He didn’t even check on the Internet, and
yesterday he acknowledged the experiment was dangerous and poorly
thought out.

Some other teens, who the 14-year-old says he doesn’t know, showed up in
the forest and one of them had a firework called an “airbomb,” the teen
says. The strangers lit the airbomb and it sent sparks shooting off the
trees and made a loud bang, the boy said.

The teens, realizing police were probably on their way, scattered. The
14-year-old and his two friends were racing away on their bicycles,
about 100 metres from the school, when a cruiser pulled in front of them
with its siren on and lights flashing.

The officer looked inside the boy’s backpack and handcuffed him, he
said.

“They never asked for a story and they weren’t really listening,” the
boy said yesterday, a few hours after being released from custody. “I
think the cop thought that we were trying to make a bomb to blow up the
school.”

The boy’s father was contacted in St. Catharines. He arranged for an
adult couple to pick up his son from Laurencrest, the youth detention
centre, but the police wouldn’t allow it, he said. It was the first time
the father and his wife had left their son and 17-year-old daughter
alone for a weekend.

The boy is under strict bail conditions, which include not consorting
with his two friends or possessing a crossbow, firearm or ammunition.

The father said he’s going to contact Chief Daniel Parkinson and try to
sort out the charges against his son.