An underage sexual misconduct case against a Chilliwack man known for pretending he is David Lee Roth gets more unusual at every court appearance.
There is David Kuntz-Angel’s eclectic past where he convinced women that he was the lead singer of Van Halen; his claim in court the current charges amount to malicious prosecution; his lawyer withdrawing from the case; the judge allowing a canine support dog for witnesses; and most recently, an alleged beating in custody that is affecting his hearing in court.
“I was beaten up really bad at Surrey Pre-Trial,” Kuntz-Angel told the court April 23. “That’s the difficulty with my hearing.”
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Kuntz-Angel faces 12 counts dating back from between 2006 and the end of 2017 for sexual misconduct with two young women who were underage at the time of the alleged offences. The two will be testifying via CCTV with the support of Canada’s first Intervention K-9, a yellow lab named Caber and the dog’s handler.
Since an appearance in March, Kuntz-Angel’s lawyer Sarah Rauch withdrew as counsel and the musician and rock-star wannabe told the court on April 3 he would represent himself.
The problem? Judge Robert Gunnell already approved the testimonial accommodations to allow the main alleged victim to testify via CCTV with Caber. So if Kuntz-Angel is going to represent himself, and his accusers are allowed to testify from a different room, cross examination will be a challenge.
Crown counsel Sandra Di Curzio applied to have a legal aid lawyer appointed to do that cross examination, something Gunnell approved at the April 23 appearance.
On April 3, he told the court he would make an application for a writ of habeas corpus, a move to argue he’s been unlawfully detained. He also said the Crown had been misleading the court and suggested Crown lawyer Sandra Di Curzio had involved in “conduct in bad faith and malicious prosecution.”
The usually confident Kuntz-Angel’s bravado was dimmed by April 23 when he claimed he had been beaten up at Surrey Pre-Trial, and he decided not to oppose the Crown’s applications to allow his young alleged victims to have testimonial accommodations.
The case at bar against the 52-year-old Kuntz-Angel includes accusations he was grooming the main complainant from the age of eight to 19, when she complained to police last year. She is 20 now.
Crown plans to show explicit images and video of the accused and the complainants.
Kuntz-Angel is known in Chilliwack and in various communities all the way to Ontario for his compulsion to pretend he is David Lee Roth, the former lead singer of Van Halen.
Indeed it was while on the lam for several months, 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.
That led to his arrest and during a subsequent bail hearing in January he was denied bail.
Kuntz-Angel’s trial is scheduled to start in May.
• READ MORE: Chilliwack’s David Lee Roth wannabe denied bail on underage sex crime charges
• READ MORE: Chilliwack man wanted for sex crimes dating back to 2006 – June 21, 2017
• READ MORE: David Lee Roth impersonator accused of Chilliwack sex crimes still on the lam – Nov. 10, 2017
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