David Lee Roth: Imposter dupes Canadian cops into thinking he’s me
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- July
- 20
This is precisely why journalists are taught to source their material.
On July 9, Suburbarazzi linked to a Toronto Sun story, one of many media outlets to report that Canadian police pulled over Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth because he was speeding and suffering from a peanut allergy.
Roth, through a statement, said Thursday that the report was completely false.
I was in Canada only from July 1st through the 4th for a performance at the Quebec City Summer Festival. I had no encounters or incidents with the police. The only thing I’m allergic to is criticism.
Adds Suburbarazzi: “And maybe hair growth.”
According to multiple sources, the Diamond Dave impostor’s name is David Kuntz and has a bit of a troubled history with the law, his family and his exgirlfriends. Yikes.
What was true about the original Suburbarazzi post were all the Journal News facts about Roth’s work to become an EMT at the Rockland County Fire Training Center in Ramapo in 2004. So, yay. Go us.
So, here’s what I decided to do in the interest of accuracy. I deleted the original Suburbarazzi item outright because the edits required would have rendered it practically unreadable. The fun and accurate facts about Roth’s times in the Lower Hudson Valley, collected by former colleague and good buddy Sulaiman Beg, are still subject to your perusal after the break.
• Roth completed a 160-hour training program that required him to commute from his Manhattan apartment to train twice a week.
• His father was a surgeon, and Roth himself worked as a surgical orderly in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1970s.
• He befriended many of the volunteers he met during the months he trained. I can vouch for this with some certainty; one of my friends from high school, who has served with the Eastchester Volunteer Ambulance Corps, had Roth listed as “Diamond Dave” in his cell phone.
• While training, Roth shunned most publicity, including interviews with NBC’s “Dateline,” until after his certification test.
• He called one of his trainers after he reportedly used a defibrillator to save the life of a Bronx woman who had a heart attack.
• Training did not stop Roth from playing gigs.
• A precursor to his up-and-down career as a deejay, he recorded an ad for Rockland’s radio station, 1640 AM.
• He rode with crews in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn several nights a week, opting to stay out of Rockland because he reportedly figured he would go unnoticed in the city.
(AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)
This entry was posted
on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 9:49 pm by Chris Serico.
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