Posted on 03/11/2009 10:16:30 AM PDT by raccoonradio
SALEM — It's hard to imagine a less likely place for three college students to do some underage drinking than the parking lot of a police station.
But that's exactly what three Salem State College students were caught doing early Saturday morning.
Now they'll spend the next six months on unsupervised probation, after admitting they were sharing a bottle of rum right outside the Salem police headquarters on Margin Street.
"You guys picked a great place to drink," Judge Richard Mori told them in Salem District Court yesterday.
It all started when Thomas McCarthy, 18, of 115 Weatherly Drive; Wayne Kenneth Renard Jr., 18, of 1011/2 Ocean Ave.; and Christopher Maxon, 18, of 5 Williams St., went down to the station to report that one of them was the victim of a hit-and-run accident, Salem police Lt. Conrad Prosniewski said.
They were asked to wait for an officer on patrol to come into the station to take their report.
The three decided to wait outside — and apparently kill some time with a 1.75-liter bottle of Bruga Dominican rum.
When Sgt. Richard Gagnon and Patrolman Fred Ryan pulled into the station parking lot, they noticed the three young men in the hedge behind the Police Department's sign, Prosniewski said.
Maxon and Renard were arrested after police confirmed that they were underage, Prosniewski said. McCarthy took off on foot and was arrested after a brief chase a couple of blocks away on High Street.
Charges of being minors in possession of alcohol and public drinking were continued without a finding for six months. If the three stay out of further trouble, their cases will be dismissed.
The judge asked the three their majors — "not criminal justice, I hope," he said.
Maxon said he's a marketing major. McCarthy is studying sports, fitness and leisure. Renard is undeclared.
Cesar Archilla, who represented Maxon, said outside court that he couldn't explain the teens' decision-making process that night.
The 18th Amendment is still in force for adults aged 18 through 21 minus 1 day.
Although RR was one of our greatest presidents, his signing of the national 21-to-drink-or-states-get-no-federal-highway-money law was a serious affront to freedom.
Give the kid an "A". It doesn't get more leisurely than swilling rum from a handled bottle in the parking lot of a Police station.
A doctor and a lawyer got into a car accident, on a small country road. The lawyer had figured that nobody else would be on the road, and had raced through a stop sign. The doctor, on a cross street, had no time to react and couldn't have missed the lawyer if he had tried. Fortunately, neither driver was hurt.The lawyer, seeing that the doctor was a little shaken up, helped him from his battered car and offered him a drink from a hip flask.The doctor accepted, took a deep drink, and handed the flask back to the lawyer. The lawyer held the flask for a minute or two, and gave it to the doctor again. The doctor took another swig. He again returned the flask to the lawyer, who closed it and put it away.
"Aren't you going to have a drink yourself?" asked the doctor.
"Not now," answered the lawyer. "I'll have something after the police leave."
Funny rocker Mojo Nixon did a bit of a rant in one of his songs where he talked about how if you were under 21, you could do all kinds of things like even go to war, but...
“you can’t buy a beer. Can’t buy a beer....”
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