Drake Bell From Drake & Josh Answers Court Charges That He Endangered Children
Drake Bell from Drake & Josh fame is facing child endangerment accusations back in Ohio. He's pleading not guilty to the charge
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Of late, there have been countless instances of Hollywood celebrities making headlines and getting stranded in the middle of controversies that their past or present actions triggered. The latest name to join the list is actor Drake Bell, best known as the former star of the Nickelodeon show Drake & Josh. He was recently arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, and charged by a court for attempted child endangerment. He has pleaded not guilty in response to the court charges.
It has been reported by TMZ that Drake Bell has been charged on two counts of crimes against a 15-year-old child in Ohio in 2017. In the court documents, the crimes Bell has been accused of committing include the attempted endangering of children, which is a fourth-degree felony. He has also been charged for disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, which is a first-degree misdemeanor.
In response to the court charges, Drake Bell has pleaded not guilty to both charges and has also posted his $2,500 bond on Thursday after which he was released. Meanwhile, he has been ordered by a judge to submit a DNA specimen to the sheriff. As per the court documents, he has also been instructed to not make any attempt of contacting the alleged victim.
Reportedly, the alleged incident took place in Ohio on December 1, 2017, and as reported by CBS News, Tyler Sinclair, a public information officer with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, has shared that the alleged female victim filed a report about the incident and against Drake Bell with her local police department in Canada in October 2018. Following this, the Canadian authorities contacted the Cleveland police who started investigating the above allegations. According to the victim, the said incident took place in a nightclub in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2017 where she was attending Bell’s concert.
Sinclair shared with the publication that in their investigation they discovered that the alleged victim had “established a relationship with Bell several years prior.” But when she attended his concert, Drake Bell voluntarily violated his duty of care and thus “created a risk of harm to the victim.” They also found that in the months before the concert took place Bell, who was 31 at the time, had sent the minor many inappropriate messages on social media.
A pretrial hearing is set for June 23, 2021, and will take place virtually via Zoom. As per FOX 8 News, Drake Bell will reportedly enter a plea of no contest or guilty to the bill of information.
This is not the only controversy that Drake Bell is battling as last year in August, his former girlfriend, Melissa Lingafelt, accused him of verbally and physically abusing her when she was in a relationship with him in the late 2000s. In his statement, Bell denied these allegations, adding that he never abused Melissa or did any of the other things she had accused him of. At the time, he had shared that he would be taking legal action against Melissa as her allegations against him were “offensive and defamatory.”
