The Waterloo regional police have apprehended four adolescents following a blatant act of disrespect where a Pride flag was liberated from a high school in Kitchener, desecrated, and subjected to incineration.
The police confirm that this unsettling incident involved a cluster of young individuals aged 15 to 17 who had taken the Pride flag from Eastwood Collegiate Institute at approximately 2:20 p.m. on the afternoon of September 21st.
The alleged perpetrators seemingly didn’t content themselves with just stealing the flag; they proceeded to trample over it before igniting and destroying it entirely.
Post this act of desecration, the high school principal reached out to the parents through email. In his communication, he disclosed that the teens involved were students of the school, and their actions didn’t end with the incineration of the flag. After vandalizing and burning the flag, these students tossed it towards a crowd of 2SLGBTQIA+ students offensively.
The act of hostility didn’t stop there. The principal illuminated, “This identical group of students cast stones towards the 2SLGBTQIA+ students as they boarded their bus.”
While fortunately, no one was injured during this incident, the police have launched an inquiry into this incident as a hate-motivated act.
Following a press release issued on Monday, October 2, it was affirmed that four male youths were taken into custody and indicted related to the incident. The charges they face are hefty, including mischief motivated by hate, public instigation of hatred, and theft under $5,000.
