Dangerous offender hearing continues for Kohl
Canadian Tire employee sexually assaulted in 2015 by man with a syringe
No sentence, other than being jailed indefinitely, can “adequately protect the public” from a Niagara man who sexually assaulted a teenager over a 20minute period after luring her into a store bathroom, court heard Tuesday.
Kevin Kohl pleaded guilty in April 2016 to several charges, including sexual assault with a weapon stemming from a harrowing incident on Sept. 15, 2015, when he brutally assaulted a 19-year-old Canadian Tire employee.
The Crown is now seeking to have the 44-year-old declared a dangerous offender. If declared a dangerous offender, he could be jailed indefinitely.
“There is no reasonable expectation that any sentence, other than indeterminate, will adequately protect the public,” assistant Crown attorney Jacquie Strecansky told Judge Peter Wilkie on Tuesday in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines.
Kohl went to the Canadian Tire store on Welland Avenue in St. Catharines that night to inject himself with drugs in the store's washroom.
Along the way he encountered the 19-year-old employee and was able to lure the unsuspecting teen inside the washroom by asking for assistance.
Kohl locked the bathroom door and proceeded to assault the young woman for more than 20 minutes, while threatening her with a drug-filled syringe.
At one point the woman tried to use her cellphone to call for help. Her phone recorded a brief video of her struggling with Kohl.
In her closing submissions Tuesday, Strecansky outlined Kohl’s lengthy criminal record.
His record includes a number of convictions for robbery. In one case, he rented a limousine and instructed the driver to go to a St. Catharines bank. Kohl then robbed the bank and returned to the limo. The driver, unaware of what had happened, was pulled over by police a short while later.
In December 2001, he was convicted of sexual assault after a woman claimed he had forced her to perform oral sex while he was driving. The assault ended when the car ran out of gas and the woman was able to escape.
In 2002, he was sentenced to more than five years in jail after