It was late 2024 when my phone began buzzing incessantly with notifications. Disturbing videos and frantic discussions flooded social media, raising alarms about missing Black children across Toronto and its surrounding areas. 

As a parent myself, anxiety set in quickly. Were our children being kidnapped off the street? Was organ harvesting involved, as some posts wildly speculated? Most importantly, how could I protect my own?

In October 2024, the community began noticing something deeply unsettling: Black boys around Toronto were vanishing one after another. Social media became ground zero for anxious parents and concerned community members, desperate for answers. Five teenage boys were reported missing during this period, along with a 26-year-old Jamaican rugby player named Alpacino Mignott, whose body was tragically discovered a month later. 

News first broke about the group of missing Black boys with a YouTube video from Emma Ansah at the African Diaspora News Channel, which has almost two million subscribers. Shana McCalla, a radio host with her own large following relentlessly spread the word online and quickly became an advocate for these parents. That led to local television news picking up the story.

But after several community town halls organized by McCalla and a string of other news media stories, there’s been no public update on what happened to these boys. 

Here’s what we know: 

All five boys (who are from the GTA) are now safely back home, and none of them sustained any physical injuries. 

There doesn’t appear to be any relationship between the boys but the common thread is that they were all found in northern Ontario towns: Thunder Bay, Sarnia, and Orillia. 

None would give the names of the people who convinced them to travel to these towns.

At least one of the boys is now facing drug charges. 

And so their return raises more questions than answers. What were the boys doing in these remote towns, how did they get there, who were they staying with?

Most of the boys’ parents have chosen silence, and declined media requests. We have seen the demand on social media for answers; and we get it. People have become invested in what happened to these boys.

But, for the parents, their fear is very real. Some are afraid that whoever manipulated their boys will come back to harm them. Some are afraid that speaking to the media will further traumatize their sons, who just want to forget about what happened and move on with their lives. Some haven’t even told their own family members what happened, far less the media. And families are living with the real possibility that if they go public, their sons will further resent them and leave home again out of anger. All of these parents are simply trying to protect their children from further harm. 

One of the parents made the deeply difficult decision to speak with us on condition of anonymity. 

This is a three-part series that dives deep into causes and consequences. This is a story influenced by human and drug trafficking, a lack of media coverage, and kids making bad decisions, compounded with anti-Black racism … and it is complex.

Cassandra’s Story: A Parent’s Nightmare

Last November, while Cassandra was on a trip overseas, she made her usual check-in call home, only to realize that her 16-year-old son had not returned from school. This went on for a few days, and Cassandra became increasingly worried. 

Upon returning, Cassandra rallied friends and family and immediately filed a police report. “We had a whole village, a whole community looking for this child.”

She asked the police why they couldn’t put out an Amber Alert and put it on the news. They cited her son’s age and that he left home of his own free will.  

​​According to Justice for Youth And Children’s website: “If you are 16 or 17, you have the right to leave home and “withdraw from parental/caregiver control”. Police only issue Amber Alerts when they have confirmed that an abduction has taken place or that the child is at risk for serious physical injury. 

“But how do we know he hasn’t been abducted?” Cassandra asked police. 

Days later, police said a ping from her son’s phone placed him in Barrie—a city he had no known connections to. Frustrated by police leads drying up, Cassandra turned to social media, pleading for any information. That’s when her son finally responded with a chilling text: “Take down the post. I’m not dead, mom.” But he wouldn’t elaborate further, leaving Cassandra terrified he might be in danger.

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Nearly a month later, Cassandra got a call from Thunder Bay police. She felt like her heart stopped when she heard the words, “We have your son.” 

“You know, on one hand I was scared, I was so confused because I had no idea how he got to Thunder Bay but on the other hand I was so relieved because finally this manhunt was over and he was safe,” says Cassandra. 

The news wasn’t good. The 16-year-old had been arrested, found alongside two older men in a house filled with fentanyl, cocaine, and cash. He faced serious drug charges and spent days in a youth detention before Cassandra paid $500 bail to bring him home.

Thunder Bay, a city over 1,000 kilometres northwest of Toronto, has become notorious to police as a central hub for drug and human trafficking operations. With its close proximity to the U.S. border and limited police resources, the remote town has become rife with illegal drug activity. 

Thunder Bay’s population is a tiny fraction of Ontario’s, but the opioid overdose rate is double the provincial average. It’s a drug trafficker’s dream: a remote area filled with vulnerable people addicted to a product that never runs out of supply. Teenagers are the ideal mule because they are impressionable and easy to manipulate.

Detective Constable Paul Grigoriou of Durham Regional Police explains, “These teens are lured north with promises of easy money, pulled into the illegal economy.” 

Cassandra said her son returned home traumatized and unwilling to discuss details. “He said he wanted to leave but they kept delaying him. They didn’t physically prevent him from leaving but they would convince him to stay. But he won’t tell us who convinced him to go down there or talk about what happened, except for saying that he did not want to go back,” Cassandra says, her voice heavy with pain.

What happened to Cassandra’s son is far from isolated. 

According to data from Toronto Police Services, in 2024, 328 youth between the ages of 12 and 17 were reported missing. 230 of them were Black youth. That's 70 per cent. 

Toronto Police also told ByBlacks, “According to our Missing Persons unit, 98% of missing Black youths were located in 2024. Of the four that were outstanding, all were located within the first 3 weeks of January 2025. As of today, we have no outstanding missing Black youth between the ages of 12-17.

Police also cautioned against spreading misinformation. “I know social media is a quick way to get it out there, but once it's out there, it becomes fact. It's the tube of toothpaste. Once you squeeze it out the tube, it's hard to put back in,” said Chris Paul, DRPS director of corporate communications. “Then you're chasing a narrative that becomes fact when it's not. I just ask the people really be mindful of what they're putting out there as fact.”

The fact is, Black youth in Toronto only make up 9.5% of the population, but yet they make up 70% of all missing youth. These numbers are staggering, underscoring a troubling reality: young Black boys are disproportionately targeted and exploited, yet their disappearances rarely make headlines.

When we think of human trafficking, we picture young girls getting groomed and lured in bad scenarios, but this happens to boys as well. Toronto Police Service (TPS) Human Trafficking Enforcement Unit Detective Richard Shaw said these children are often given the external validation that they aren’t receiving from trustworthy people in their community. Their vulnerability is used against them. “It’s psychological manipulation, plain and simple.” 

Shaw says that anybody can be trafficked but a child who “hasn’t found their niche” is particularly vulnerable. He points out that the way a young girl is lured into sex trafficking is actually very similar to how a boy is trafficked into the drug trade. 

“What we most commonly see is the Romeo scenario, where there is substantial grooming. The person gets to know the child, either through social media or at school or at the mall. They find out personal details that they can exploit, like where they live, any debt or embarrassing secrets their family may have. Then they love bomb them with gifts and favours. Then they say, well look at everything I’ve done for you, now you owe me. If that doesn’t work, they use the personal information they have to make violent threats on the child or their family.”

Detective Constable Martin Douglas, a veteran officer with TPS’s Engage 416, highlights the societal blind spot about missing boys. 

“We focus heavily on young girls, seeing them as more vulnerable. But boys are children too, and they’re vulnerable in ways we fail to acknowledge.” Douglas hints at the emotional turmoil Black teenage boys face but is often dismissed as something they “just need to get over.” 

This tracks with Cassandra’s reflection on where she felt things started going downhill before her son left home. She says he was passionate about basketball but when he entered high school, he didn’t make the team. He was devastated and started hanging out with kids from a different school.

“These kids were not a good crowd. The teachers began targeting him, calling him ‘weedhead’ in the hallways because of who he was hanging out with. They would accuse him of all kinds of things, it’s like he had a target on his back. So he developed this anger. It was very stressful for him, and for me too,” says Cassandra. “One of his friends also passed away and we later learned he felt that we didn’t care enough about what he was feeling.”

While Cassandra is glad to have her son back, he is not the same child who left. “Now that he’s home, he is just angry and irritated all the time,” says Cassandra. “I am trying to convince him to talk to someone, like a therapist. On the bright side, we moved him to a different school and he is on the basketball team now, so he is happier. There is no one bullying him, no teachers calling him names. But we have to get his anger under control. I keep asking him, did anyone do anything to you out there? Don't be afraid to say what happened. But he won’t talk about it.”

While Cassandra was the only parent among the group of five boys willing to speak with ByBlacks, we sat down with a father who lived this exact nightmare three years ago. His son was also lured to Thunder Bay and when he found out, he and his wife drove 15 hours to the northern Ontario town. They spent 48 hours searching the streets for their son. 

Click here to read When Black Boys Go Missing Part Two: How I Got My Son Back

With files from Shellene Drakes-Tull.