Authorities say Kania was driving drunk on the wrong side of Interstate 85 in July 2015 when he was involved in a head-on collision, killing three people and injuring a fourth.
One of Kania’s defense lawyers, Roger Smith Jr., filed two motions that were heard in front of Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour and Orange County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Neiman. The first was a motion to suppress evidence found on Kania’s iPhone, and the second was to postpone the trial date currently scheduled for October 3.
In his testimony, Sgt. John Collins of the N.C. Highway Patrol said Kania’s mother told him that she had been contacted by Kania’s friends through his cell phone.
Collins said one of Kania’s fraternity brothers reported he had taken Kania’s phone on the night of the crash in an attempt to keep him from leaving the Sigma Phi Epsilon parking lot. The phone was not found on Kania at the scene of the crash.
A search warrant was drafted for the phone that gave officers the right to search Kania, his parents and any others in Kania’s hospital room for July 23, the day of Kania’s release. When Trooper Michael Stuart arrived at UNC Hospitals, Kania’s parents said the phone was in their Asheboro home and they were willing to retrieve it, Stuart said.
Stuart sent a former Randolph County trooper Christopher Azelton to retrieve it from the Kania home in Asheboro. Azelton contacted Michael Kania, the defendant’s father, over the phone.
According to Azelton’s testimony, he said he would come by their home an hour after the phone call so that the Kanias had time to back up the phone.
Michael Kania, the defendant’s father, handed over the phone to the trooper without argument in the driveway of his home, despite the search warrant being for Kania’s hospital room. Azelton said he never entered the Kania home.
