CANMORE – An Ontario man who tried to lure a 10-year-old Canmore girl with the promise of kittens is appealing his conviction and sentence.
Benjamin Danby, 24, was found guilty last summer after a judge-only trial determined he was responsible for kidnapping, abduction and assault of the Bow Valley girl.
The trial took less than a week with Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Pat Sullivan ruling his decision 10 days after the trial start date.
In 2015, Canmore RCMP charged Danby with assault, kidnapping and abduction after the young girl alleged the man asked her to go with him into the woods near her home along Kananaskis Way to see some kittens, when he grabbed her from behind and covered her mouth.
Danby was also charged with voyeurism that was leveled in relation to the evidence found during the investigation involving unrelated photos of adult females, however during a preliminary inquiry into the charges in the Canmore Provincial Courthouse in January 2017, Judge D. Pahl ruled there was not enough evidence to continue to trial on the voyeurism charge.
Danby originally applied for bail in Canmore to live with his girlfriend but it was found to be problematic due to the fact his girlfriend lived 200 metres from where the victim of the assault lived.
He was then released in the fall of 2015 with a $10,000 surety no deposit bail with the condition that Danby return home to Innisfil, Ont. to stay with his parents.
Danby was out on bail when he was arrested again after the South Simcoe Police Tech Crimes Unit, assisted by the Ontario Provincial Police Child Exploitation unit, executed a search warrant on the home of this parents in January 2017. Several electronic devices were seized from the home and Danby was arrested and charged with breach of his release conditions.
Three years after the Canmore incident, Danby was found guilty of kidnapping, abduction and assault. After the verdict was delivered in June, Danby was sentenced on Jan. 15 to two years in jail, given 11 months of pre-trial credit with the additional 13 months to be served in jail and an additional two-year probation.
Danby is appealing the assault charge alleging there is “reasonable doubt” and the sentence, stating he feels “the sentence is to (sic) long for the conviction.”
