KENTVILLE - RCMP officers will be waiting at the Maine-New Brunswick border to arrest an accused sex offender from the Annapolis Valley when he is deported for illegally entering the United States.
Aaron Byron Cumberland, 27, was one of three people picked up by American authorities May 31 near Houlton, Maine.
It wasn’t immediately known when the deportation process would be complete, or if Cumberland was already back in Canada. No one was able to provide that answer June 6.
Cumberland was charged last November by Nova Scotia RCMP’s internet child exploitation unit with three counts of internet luring, one of invitation to sexual touching and one of making sexually explicit material available to a child. The charges involve three alleged victims.
Police applied for a warrant for his arrest last November because they hadn’t been able to locate him. They released his name and photo, saying they feared he might be trying to leave the country. He turned himself in to Halifax Regional Police the next day.
Const. Mandy Edwards with the ICE unit said June 6 that New Brunswick RCMP have issued warrants for Cumberland’s arrest on charges of breach of a recognizance.
“He will be dealt with there for the breaches,” she said.
Cumberland’s release conditions on the charges from last November included not leaving Nova Scotia, surrendering his passport and not using or having electronic devices that can access the Internet. An affidavit filed by a U.S. border patrol agent in district court in Bangor said that Cumberland had a laptop and cellphone with him when he was arrested in Maine.
Edwards said the arrest warrant filed by New Brunswick RCMP requests that he be remanded until he deals with the breach charges, because there is a fear that he is a flight risk.
Cumberland is due in court in Kentville on June 21 for a preliminary inquiry on one of the luring counts, along with the charges of invitation to sexual touching and making sexually explicit material available to a child.
“He’ll need to be transported back for court then if the matters in New Brunswick are not (yet) dealt with,” Edwards said.
He is scheduled to be tried on the other two charges in October.
Edwards said the Crown attorney here is consulting with her counterpart in New Brunswick and RCMP there about the breach charges and the time between then and Cumberland’s next appearance here.
The Nova Scotia allegations are dated between March of 2016 and November 2017, and police said last year they involve children from Kings County. Police were tipped off by someone who came to them last November.
U.S. border patrol officers charged Cumberland, and a man and woman from Fredericton, on May 31 with unlawful entry after they were seen walking near Houlton, which is across the border from Woodstock, N.B.
American officials allege that the trio crossed the border at a spot that is not designated as a port of entry.
The affidavit submitted to the U.S. court said the three were seen carrying backpacks on the Canadian side of the border on a road parallel to the international boundary before they were spotted on a road in Maine that leads away from the border.
It said the three each gave false names and offered false identities, and said they had “no claimed countries of citizenship.”
None of them had proper identification and all “initially claimed to not believe in or recognize international borders or boundaries but believe that travel between countries should be free and uninhibited,” the affidavit said.
Edwards said the other two people arrested are not part of any investigation here.
RCMP haven’t said whether the Nova Scotia charges relate to Cumberland’s involvement with tennis coaching in Kings County.
In 2013, Cumberland, who was born in Romania but grew up in Chicago and Toronto, was named Tennis Nova Scotia’s coach of the year.
He has taught tennis at various locations, including in Kentville and New Minas. He ran Cangaroo Tennis, which provided tennis instructors for programs throughout Kings County. The company’s website shows programs were scheduled in five towns and communities for 2017.
The province’s Registry of Joint Stock Companies shows Cangaroo Athletic Association as defaulting for non-payment in January 2016. Cumberland was listed as executive director and general manager, and living in Kentville at the time.
When police applied for the warrant last year, they said his last known address was in Bedford.
