Caption: Screen grab from Youtube
A Sudanese national suspected to be 30 years old, has been apprehended by Canadian border officials after posing as a teenager while playing for a high school basketball program.
Jonathan Nicola, who stands at 6’9 and weighs 202 pounds, has spent the last six months as a 17-year-old grade 11 student of Catholic Central High in Windsor, as per reports from Fox Sports.
The deception was first revealed by Canadian sports media, Hoops Hype Canada, in their Twitter page on Thursday.
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BREAKING Jonathon Nikola who played for Catholic Central @ @ofsaabasketball is 30 not 17 years old (@TheWindsorStar) pic.twitter.com/Ng2vKGRLs6
— Hoops Hype Canada (@HoopsHypeCA) April 20, 2016
Nicola, who’s been living under a student visa, has been staying with the basketball team’s head coach, Pete Cusumano, through a program called Canada Homestay, which finds homes for foreign students.
He was originally from South Sudan, but his family moved to Nairobi in war-torn country of Kenya—which eventually influenced him to go to Windsor.
Cusumano even considered the supposed young lad as a player who could eventually make his way to the NBA.
Meanwhile, the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board hasn’t divulged much information on the charge, however, they did discuss the general protocol for international students.
“Generally I can tell you that we have a system of checks and balances in place that whenever international students are coming into any of our schools, we make sure that they have all of the necessary government documentation that they require in order to be in one of our schools,” said spokesman Stephen Fields.
Nicola’s unusual case is not the first time an adult pretended to be a teenager to play basketball, as a 22-year-old man named Jerry Joseph also presented himself as a 16-year-old in Odessa, Texas, in 2010.
A similar incident also occurred in 2013, involving a 22-year-old married man, McKinzie Sewell, who used a fake transcript to enrol at Memphis Ridgeway High in Tennessee—with his wife posing as his mother.
Canada Border Services Agency remains tight-lipped about Nicola’s case, but he will reportedly face charges for breaching the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.
He remains detained in Canada border patrol’s custody as of this story’s writing. Khristian Ibarrola, INQUIRER.net