BRANTFORD, Ont. -- While newspapers, radio shows and the Internet are abuzz at the news that David Lee Roth was in southern Ontario last month, the man assisted by police during a traffic stop was not the rocker.
For starters, the real Roth was tearing up Madison Square Garden with Van Halen during a makeup concert on May 23, the night that a man reported to be Roth was in medical distress while driving in Oakland, Ont., southwest of Brantford.
Provincial police stopped a speeding driver at 7 p.m. that night and found he was in anaphylactic shock due to a peanut allergy.
Two young officers got paramedic assistance for the man and one of them visited him later at the Brantford General Hospital.
But Const. Larry Plummer admits the officers wouldn't know Roth if he bit them.
"The guys didn't put a report in till later in the week and someone else in the office spotted the name and went, 'Hey!'," Plummer said Thursday.
Somehow the word got out and, before you know it, TV was interviewing the two officers.
Lacking an interview with Roth himself or the Oakland man Roth was supposedly staying with, they interviewed the next-door-neighbour of the Oakland man.
Then area newspapers jumped on the story, adding that Roth and a couple of Brantford General Hospital nurses had partied at a local lounge after he had recovered.
From there the story grew exponentially all over the Internet and only on Thursday did people pause to consider things.
"Was it really him?" mused Liquid Lounge owner Cheri Walsh. "It seemed to be him and when I asked him, 'Are you David Lee Roth', he said, 'Yes,' but there've been a million discussions in here since."
It was a young crowd at the bar and they were convinced the man was someone important. He was dressed expensively in an eccentric outfit and had a hard-living, aged rocker look to him.
He got up and performed a Roth song -- "Ice Cream Man" -- with the band of the evening and, by all accounts, did a terrific job.
And the man returned the following evening looking for his lost cellphone which, he said, contained important numbers that he didn't want to have fall into the wrong hands.
"We talked for about an hour and he told me all about the peanut allergy and hospital visit," said Walsh.
Now, provincial police are trying to verify the story, too, saying they can't confirm whether the responding officers actually got ID from the man who they helped.
The puzzle has had Plummer researching Van Halen tour dates to see if the cops were had.
"As soon as somebody wonders if it could be an impostor, everyone starts guessing," said Plummer. "The main thing is, whoever he was, he was definitely very much in distress and our guys did an awesome job getting him help."
Due to privacy concerns, the county ambulance services and the hospital can't confirm if they treated or identified a David Lee Roth that night in May.
However, a handful of videos on Youtube feature Roth prancing around the stage at Madison Square Garden, all of them identified as being of the May 23 concert.
Dean Hajas, who played host to the mystery man for about three weeks, insisted his guest was the real deal.
But Hajas can't explain how Roth could have spent the evening at the hospital and a local bar on May 23, yet turned in a high-energy performance in New York on the same evening.
"It's up to you to draw your own conclusions."
[Canoe]
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