Mountie cleared after ding dong ditch prank leads to child in cuffs, guns drawn

WINNIPEG – A Mountie won’t face criminal charges after a prank that began with a doorbell ring ended with a girl handcuffed and bawling, rifles drawn and the officer under arrest.

“This was not a targeted home invasion of a police officer,” Bruce Sychuk, director of the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba, says in his report. 

“This was a case of a bunch of young teenagers playing ding dong ditch.”

Sychuk’s report, dated May 13, says it happened about a week before last Halloween.

It was weekend night and a group of teens were looking for something to do.

They decided on ringing doorbells and running away, a prank classic enough to have earned numerous names, including ding dong ditch, nicky nicky nine doors and knock knock ginger. 

Among them was a 13-year-old girl, who said she didn’t want to play but would tag along. 

They got a rise out of the man in the fourth house they tried, who yelled at them and may have said they’d be in trouble if they did it again. So the boys in the group decided it would be funny to try him again. 

They rang the bell again.

Inside the house, the officer later said there was agitation. The dogs began barking. People could be seen running outside. The Mountie feared for his life and for his family.

No one came to the door. The teens thought that was the end of it. It was not.

The report says that as the teens walked down the street, a car screeched to a halt and two armed men jumped out. One was the man from the house.

He was wearing khaki shorts, a T-shirt and a police vest with a pistol holstered to it. The other was his brother, who was holding a rifle.

The kids scattered, leaving the 13-year-old girl standing there, thinking she had done nothing wrong.

The man approached, his Taser drawn but low. 

The girl remembered asking if everything was OK.

The off-duty officer responded, “Do you think this is funny?” 

The officer grabbed the girl, took her phone and handcuffed her hands behind her back. He said was arresting her, perhaps on trespassing or mischief.

She said he had a tight grip on her as he pulled or pushed her four blocks to her house. The officer’s brother followed in his car.

At the girl’s home, her mother had already heard that something had happened. She feared her daughter had been kidnapped, then saw her coming home in handcuffs, tears and mascara running down her face, with a man not in uniform. 

She yelled, at him, accused him of being a fake cop and asked for his badge number. 

He wouldn’t provide it. 

She called 911.

Brandon city police arrived to find an armed man in shorts and a shirt. They drew their rifles. “Hands up! Don’t move!” they shouted.

“Come on,” the officer responded to them. “You know me.”

Put your hands on the car, they told him. He complied, was handcuffed and arrested for an investigation into forcible confinement.

He was never charged. The girl told police she was left with a sore wrist, arm and elbow from the handcuffs and from the man walking her home. 

The officer said he responded the way he did, because he feared a home invasion. The report notes there were no break and enters, theft or mischief reported in the neighbourhood in the previous year.

Sychuk says that in the end, the officer showed “questionable judgment,” but the bar for further action was not met.

“I am not in a position to say that his actions are criminal,” he says in his report.

“What is clear is that (the girl) continues to suffer trauma.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2026.