Trial vacated in child grooming case

SANDPOINT — Gary Daniel Kobelt Jr., 29, Sagle has requested an opportunity to change his plea at a Sept. 19 court date which was originally scheduled to be the start of his trial.

The Sept. 19 trial has been vacated according to court records and instead a change of plea hearing will be held in its place.

Kobelt has been accused of enticing a child through the internet.

Kobelt, who goes by “Junior,” is alleged to have had inappropriate conversations via text and email with a child under the age of 16. The child’s mother accidentally found the messages while attempting to play music on her child’s phone, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office was contacted and a deputy responded to the family’s residence. The child’s parents shared screenshots of the text conversations with deputies. They also learned that Kobelt had communicated with the child via email as well.

The responding deputies escalated the situation to Detective Barry D. Reinink II, who later met with the parents to find and review any potential digital evidence.

Reinink eventually learned that Kobelt had created at least one fake email account since his wife had access to his personal email account.

According to court documents, during the conversations Kobelt claimed to love the child in an “adult” way, described “long hugs” he had with the child, described sex acts he desired to have with the alleged victim and made plans to sleep together in their undergarments.

Court records claim that the victim regularly spent long periods of time alone with Kobelt and was going to spend the night with him while his wife was away.

Throughout the conversations, which began around the end of last summer and lasted about a month, Kobelt admits his desires and behaviors are wrong several times.

The victim said several times in a forensic interview that the conversations felt wrong, but she did not know how to respond to Kobelt’s advances, choosing instead one-word replies like “yeah” and “okay” in an effort to end what she called the “bad conversations,” according to court documents.

The detective and the child’s mother decided to call Kobelt and record the conversation. The victim’s mother told him that he was taking advantage of her daughter. Kobelt admitted fault saying “it was 100% me. I am the adult.”

Upon reviewing the text and email conversations, Reinink found reasonable cause to charge Kobelt with enticing a child through the Internet. Kobelt faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.