Wade Angel’s five-year hunt to find justice for the tragic loss of his son took another happy turn last month when William Angel’s alleged killer was finally extradited to the U.S.
Christopher Ponce, who is accused of killing 20-year-old William Angel and injuring two others while driving drunk on the wrong side of I-275 in 2002, was finally turned over to American authorities by Spain on April 6.
“It is now 2 a.m. on April 7th,’’ Wade wrote on his blog, FindChrisPonce.com, which he has been updating since 2014. “My wife and I had the pleasure of witnessing Christopher Ponce being escorted into the Orient Rd Jail here in Tampa this evening. We waited at the airport for 5 hours hoping to see him as the U S Marshalls escorted him off the plane. They took him by another route so we had to hurry in order to beat them to the jail and just barely did so. We were able to see him being escorted into the booking area of the jail.”
He excitedly wrote “NO BOND!!!!” on the blog April 8, a day later, when Ponce made his first court appearance. “So gratifying to see him doing the inmate shuffle.”
Wade, who quit working for a time while he pursued every lead he could online — up to 15 hours a day for three years — drove himself to the limit in his efforts to find his son’s alleged killer.
So, Wade’s post on April 9 was surely one of the most satisfying.
“For the first time in years I got a good nights sleep,’’ he wrote. “I actually woke up feeling good and refreshed. It was awesome.”
Ponce was driving the wrong way in the northbound lanes of I-275 near downtown Tampa when he hit William’s 2000 Ford Mustang, also seriously injuring passengers Jay Davis and Robert Newberry.
On May 9, 2013, while awaiting trial for DUI manslaughter, Ponce slipped off an electronic monitoring bracelet he had been wearing and had been on the run ever since.
In 2014, CNN’s “The Hunt,” hosted by John Walsh of “America’s Most Wanted” fame, profiled the case.
That manhunt ended Aug. 9, 2016, when Ponce was captured by local police in a bus station in Almeria, Spain.
At the time, Wade said he was not surprised that Ponce was captured in Spain. He said he had received a tip through the blog shortly after starting it in 2013 that Spain is where Ponce was headed. He started tracking Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses, to see if anyone was checking his site from Spain.
Wade said someone definitely checked his website from Spain, once from a McDonald’s, but mostly on public wifi at bus stations.
“I knew it!,’” Wade said when he heard Ponce had been found. He said Ponce and his family were too narcissistic to resist the chance to see their names in print and wonder what people were saying about them. It was one of the reasons that he started the website.
Wade told the Neighborhood News in August that FindChrisPonce.com would remain up right through the trial.
“The day he is sentenced, that will be my last post,’’ he says.
That last post is closer now than it has ever been.
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