Chelan County Prosecuting Attorney Drops All Charges Against Darren Hunter
The charges were "quietly dismissed" on Friday, June 28 after video surveillance and DNA results exonerated him, his lawyer Nicole Hankins said
The Chelan County Prosecuting Attorney’s office dropped all charges against Darren Hunter on Friday, June 28. Hunter, 53, is a former special education teacher from Kent now residing in Chelan. He was facing charges of rape in the first degree, assault second degree, robbery first degree, kidnapping first degree, and two counts of possession with intent to deliver.
But those charges were “quietly dismissed” after video surveillance and DNA results exonerated him, Hunter’s lawyer Nicole Hankins said.
“The prosecutor has had the video surveillance since the fall and the DNA exoneration in March but are only dismissing the case now,” Hankins said.
She said the reason probably has something to do with the fact that the woman who made the allegations against Hunter is a confidential informant for local law enforcement and the FBI.
According to that woman, who was kept anonymous by law enforcement officers in reports regarding the case, Hunter allegedly raped her and strangled her with a lanyard she was wearing at the time. She told Chelan County Sheriff’s deputies that the lanyard broke during that alleged assault.
You can read the information originally submitted to Chelan County Superior Court outlining those charges here.
But a sexual assault kit test was done the day of that alleged rape, and according to test results, Hunter’s DNA was not in the victim’s system. Also according to surveillance footage, the lanyard Hunter allegedly strangled the woman with earlier that day was shown to be hanging around her neck, unbroken.
Hankins said that defense investigators found the footage and made Chelan County Sheriff’s deputies aware of its existence, but they never took the time to get it.
“The surveillance video calling into question the veracity of the claims made by the alleged victim was known and available to law enforcement at the beginning stages of the investigation and they never made efforts to obtain it,” Hankins wrote.
Chelan County Prosecutor Robert Sealby did not respond to a request for comment on the matter by publishing time, but I will update this piece with his response if he gets back to me.
In 2022, Hunter pleaded guilty to assault with sexual motivation while working as a special education teacher at a Kent middle school. After news of this new case broke and was covered by everyone from KIRO to the Wenatchee World, a law firm named Pfau, Cochran, Vertetis, Amala Attorneys At Law set up a website and started advertising to try to find other potential victims of Hunter’s. But Hankins said that from what she understands no one have come forward.
I reached out to Pfau, Cochran, Vertetis, Amala and will update this piece with more information about that potential civil suit if and when I have it.
As far as what’s next for her client, Hankins said he is clean and sober now and wants to move on with his life. But she said that’s hard to do after the media and the Chelan County Prosecutor’s office branded him a dangerous rapist and let that label stick even after they should have known he was not guilty as charged.
You can read the state’s motion to dismiss the charges against Hunter here.
well, Mr Hunter may not need to worry about finding a job after he wins a lawsuit against the county. What would make a prosecutor or law enforcement think its acceptable to withhold evidence from the defense? Shameful!
If I'm reading this right the guilty plea was for a separate case?