The Chilliwack man convicted in BC Supreme Court of grooming and having sex with a young girl over a decade was then granted a mistrial and is now scheduled to be retried in May.
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David Paul Kuntz-Angel, who is known from B.C. to Ontario for pretending to be American rock star David Lee Roth, is also now out of jail. He was granted bail on Jan. 31, 2020 in BC Supreme Court in New Westminster without deposit or surety but with some conditions.
The long and bizarre case dates back to 2006 when the grooming began and continued until 2016. Witnesses on the stand reported seeing him with the young girl as far back as 2007 and as recently as 2016.
Kuntz-Angel was arrested in late 2017 after being wanted by police. Since then he spent 722 days at Surrey Pretrial, which means he will be given credit for 1,083 in custody or nearly three years.
He faced 12 charges in total and went through a 20-day trial starting last March after which Justice Neill Brown acquitted Kuntz-Angel of sexual exploitation, sexual assault, assault causing bodily harm, and one count of procuring.
But he was convicted of two counts of sexual interference, two counts of invitation to sexual touching, one count each of assault and uttering threats.
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But on Nov. 2019, at what was supposed to be a sentencing hearing, his lawyer Chantal Paquette applied for a mistrial, citing questions over the mental faculties of Justice Brown.
“[O]bservations throughout the course of the trial have raised, in my view, legitimate concerns about the mental faculties of Justice Brown and that they may have been impaired and they may have impaired his ability to preside over the trial,” Paquette said.
The case was then in front of Justice Dev Dley out of Kamloops. Brown’s status is still unclear, but a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told The Progress that the case was reassigned pursuant to a section of the criminal code that states this can happen if a judge “dies or is for any reason unable to continue.”
In January, the court ordered the mistrial. Kuntz-Angel was back in court for a bail hearing and to fix new dates on Jan. 31.
He was granted bail and a new trial is now scheduled to begin May 25.
Kuntz-Angel has a colourful history going back many years to Brantford, Ontario, where he often pretended to be the Van Halen lead singer, leading to news reports in that province. Indeed it was while on the lam for several months in B.C. in 2017, that his obsession with David Lee Roth led to his arrest, as he went into the Long & McQuade store in both Chilliwack and Abbotsford and told staff he was the American rock singer.
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