SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Canada, June 10, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A teenage boy was arrested twice as a consequence of his public stance against coercive promotion of COVID-19 vaccines to children.
The 18-year-old, whose full name is known to LifeSiteNews, prefers to be known as “Evan Freedom” in print.
Evan, a Grade 12 student at Nutana Collegiate, told LifeSite that a school official took him out of his classroom on the morning of May 20 and led him to an office where he was arrested and handcuffed by two officers from the Saskatoon Police Service. He was discretely spirited away through a back door, taken to a police station, fingerprinted, photographed, kept in a cell for more than six hours, and charged with one count of causing a disturbance (“by shouting”) and three counts of mischief over $5,000.
“I was absolutely stunned,” Evan said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
His youthful career as a freedom activist began last summer when he began looking into claims about the coronavirus. “It just seemed sketchy to me,” he said.
But Evan began going to anti-lockdown rallies and speaking out publicly against masks, lockdown restrictions, and the experimental COVID-19 vaccines only two months ago. In late April, he went to a freedom rally in Regina, Saskatchewan — his first. A few days later, he met another teenage freedom activist, 18-year-old Cody Kuntz, at a freedom rally specifically for children. They were two of the four kid speakers. Evan continued to go to freedom rallies in different Saskatchewan towns in early May. Then, on May 11, Evan, Cody, and a third boy took part in two protest actions that got them into trouble with police.
Spurred on by students at Saskatoon’s Tommy Douglas Collegiate, to whom Evan and Cody were talking about COVID-19 management, the boys took an experimental trip inside to see how teachers would react to them not wearing masks. Both Evan and Cody told LifeSiteNews that they were there for less than 4 minutes.
“All we did on that day [at Tommy Douglas] was to go speak to some kids outside and walk through the school,” Cody Kuntz told LifeSiteNews via email. “We were going to talk to some kids inside as well, which we never did because there were little to no kids inside. We were in there for about three minutes and 15 seconds. The principal, I believe it was, came running after my car taking pictures of my license plate.”
The boys next went across town to Pope John Paul II elementary school, where they stood across the street with signs encouraging drivers to “Honk for Freedom” and children — who under Saskatchewan’s “mature minor” COVID-19 vaccination provisions can choose to be inoculated without their parents’ consent — to “Just Say No.” A third sign asked, “Unmask the kids.”
“The police came and spoke to us and issued us a verbal warning telling us to not do it again, otherwise we could be charged and ticketed,” Cody told LifeSiteNews.
Evan identified one of the officers as Constable Amy; she was to be one of the officers who would arrest him.
“We then went back-and-forth with the police asking questions and having a conversation with them,” Cody continued. “The police then left and one officer sat a few hundred feet down in a patrol car and watched us. We were never asked to leave because we were not breaking the law.”
Cody confirmed that in less than a week and a half, Evan got arrested and that there was a warrant out for his own arrest. He turned himself in and was arrested on May 21.
“I have the same charges as him: three counts of mischief over $5,000 and one count of disturbing the peace by shouting,” he wrote.
Evan says that he was told later that three elementary schools were put into lockdown because of their protests; LifeSiteNews has not been able to establish that any schools were locked down.
One of the conditions for Evan’s release was that he not communicate with his friend Cody, “directly or indirectly”, a point Evan is quick to underscore, because attending the same rallies as Cody afterwards — they had stood back-to-back without speaking to each other, Evan said — led to his second arrest on May 28.
“That also happened at school,” he recalled. “I went outside for my afternoon break. I saw a Resource [police assigned to schools] car and a Resource officer at the side of it. They were laughing, and I was laughing back because I was [joking] that they were probably there for me. Then I saw Constable Amy’s car, and there were two cops in it.”
Evan told LifeSiteNews that Constable Amy approached and told him that he was under arrest again. This was for allegedly violating his conditions. Evan is highly indignant about this, saying that he did not violate his conditions, and that if he had, he was supposed to pay a fine of $500, not be arrested. And this time, his arrest was rather more public, as he was led in front of the school to the waiting car and, Evan said, thrown against it.
“They treated me like an animal,” he said. “It was disgusting.”
Evan was taken to the police station where, he says, the officer in charge of the School Resource Unit told him that his arrest had taken priority over the complaint of four kids who alleged that they had been sexually assaulted in a high school.
“They were prioritizing someone who was at school trying to get their education, just to harass — I think — just because they had a little bit of evidence of Cody and me being around each other,” Evan said.
“Which I guess is what they arrested me for. Which is false,” he continued. “It’s an illegal arrest.”
Evan was kept in a cell overnight and appeared the next morning before a judge who waived the $500 fine, seemed surprised Evan was even there before him, and sent him away.
Both Evan and Cody are passionately opposed to Saskatchewan’s mask mandates and to the peddling of the COVID-19 vaccines to 12-year-olds. Schools are inoculating children as young as 13 without parental consent, thanks to the province’s “mature minor consent” provisions.
But both boys believe that 12-year-olds are being inoculated at school without their parents’ consent. “I believe a 12-year-old is not capable of making the decision to get a vaccine,” Cody said via email. “You have to be 16 to drive a car, 18 to get a tattoo, 18 to vote, and 19 to drink in Saskatchewan.”
“A 12-year-old’s brain is not capable of making a decision of this nature. Our brains develop till we are upwards of 25. A 12-year-old does not know the risks and dangers that come with a vaccine. A 12-year-old is misinformed, and rarely do they know all the information. They hear one side of the story, and that is [what] the school pushes on them.”
Right before his first arrest, Evan told LifeSiteNews, his English teacher was showing his high school class a film about the necessity of taking a COVID-19 vaccine.
“They were showing this long video, which ended up taking an hour of my English class,” he said. “[It was about] how the vaccine’s going to save you and your family. My teacher said if you don’t get it, your family’s going to die a slow and painful death.”
Evan says that his father isn’t “supportive” of his activism, but that his mother has been “more than supportive.”
“She’s amazing,” he enthused. “She has been with me from time to time, helping me, guiding me. She’s one of the best people ever right now in my life.”
Meanwhile, Evan wants to underscore that he is “not an anti-vaxxer,” that he had his ordinary childhood inoculations, and that he would never “shame” anyone for taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
His ire is saved for the government. “I am disgusted with how the government is rolling [the vaccine] out,” he said. “More so with schools. That makes me want to throw up, that they’re letting poor little kids decide if they can [take] an experimental ‘vaccine.’ I don’t even like to call it that. I call it a gene therapy. It’s genocide, if you ask me.”
Cody Kuntz told LifeSiteNews that he does not at all regret talking to kids about vaccines and masks.
“I’m glad for what I did and would not go back,” he said. “I know that what I did was right and I know the kids needed more information. I’ve seen kids taking off their masks because they knew what was going on was not okay. They just needed a second approval.”
Kelsie Fraser, a spokeswoman for the Saskatoon Police Services, confirmed at least one of the arrests.
“We can tell you that an 18-year-old male was charged with Mischief and Causing a Disturbance on May 11, 2021,” Fraser said via email. “On May 28, the individual was found to have breached his court-ordered conditions and was subsequently arrested on June 1 at approximately 6:45pm.”
“He was released from Police custody the following morning after appearing before a Justice of the Peace. He is expected to make his next court appearance on June 23.”
A spokeswoman for the Saskatoon Public Schools told LifeSiteNews that their school was not locked down. She would not comment on Evan’s arrest because, she said, “it is a police matter.”
LifeSiteNews has reached out to Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools and is expecting a response.