Body of confinement suspect found
Provincial police in northwestern Ontario have confirmed they’ve found the body of a man wanted in the confinement and sexual assault of a 16-year-old in Nova Scotia.
RCMP Sgt. Alain LeBlanc said a body found Wednesday in a heavily wooded area off a remote logging road in Long Lac, northeast of Thunder Bay, was that of 31-yearold Wayne Alan Cunningham.
He was wanted in Nova Scotia on charges of holding a teenaged boy captive and sexually assaulting him over several days last month.
It has not yet been determined whether Cunningham took his own life, OPP Acting Sgt. Anne McCoy told the Star Thursday. She said the body was found not far from a 2003 Hyundai Elantra believed driven by Cunningham.
The RCMP said foul play is not suspected.
The discovery of the body follows the earlier arrest of a second suspect, David James LeBlanc, 47, near Long Lac on Sept. 30. LeBlanc remains in custody awaiting transfer by the RCMP back to Nova Scotia to face charges of forcible confinement and sexual assault.
Leblanc was arrested Sunday on a road in Greenstone after officers received a report of a man wandering with no shoes and wearing light clothing in near-freezing temperatures.
Leblanc’s mother, Violet Leblanc, said Cunningham, who had known her son for 11 years, had diabetes and was taking insulin in syringes, but she didn’t know if he had the medication with him.
She said she learned of his death Wednesday evening when Cunningham’s mother called.
“She called me and told me that he was gone,” she said from her home in Liverpool, N.S.
Violet Leblanc said she wished her son had gone to police when charges were filed against him and Cunningham.
“They should have turned themselves in when they (were) asked and I think he would have been all right today,” she said. The RCMP in Nova Scotia began an investigation last week after a woman reported a teenage boy came to her doorstep in Lunenburg County chained at his wrists and ankles. “The kid was terrified, there’s no doubt about that,” Alice Arnold, 78, told the Star.
In documents filed last week with the provincial court in Bridgewater, N.S., RCMP Const. Timothy Cole said a 16-year-old boy told them he was sleeping on the streets of Halifax last month when he woke up in a van and was taken to a home.
Cole said two men held the boy against his will, sexually assaulted him over several days and talked about trying to sell him.