Baltimore County police charged one Loch Raven High School student with drug distribution early yesterday and forced 80 others who were passengers on charter buses loaded with alcohol to find other ways home from their senior prom.
Police were called to the prom at the Marriott Hunt Valley Inn in Cockeysville by Carolyn J. Nelson, the president of the Association of Limousine Operators in Maryland, whose members have for the second year promised to keep liquor out of their limousines on prom nights.
Ms. Nelson called Baltimore County police to the inn's parking lot about 9:30 p.m. Friday after one of her drivers told her that some Loch Raven students he was chauffeuring talked about selling and using drugs, police said yesterday.
Police said they found a backpack with marijuana and a "pharmaceutical-sized" bottle of suspected Valium in the limo. They and school officials locked the doors to the ballroom and searched for the limo's four passengers. Police said the four were questioned, but only one was charged.
After police arrived and searched the limousine, several officer arrived and searched the two motor coaches with the help of drug-sniffing dogs. Inside, they found beer, liquor and champagne in coolers and backpacks.
The drivers of both buses -- from Woodlawn Motor Coach Inc. and Gunther's Charters -- told police they did not know their passengers had brought alcohol aboard. The drivers were not charged.
"It's really difficult to charge the driver if he says he didn't see the alcohol and we have no one else to say that he did," said E. Jay Miller, a Baltimore County police spokesman.
Officials of neither bus company could be reached for comment yesterday.
The arrested student faces disciplinary action, including expulsion, according to Loch Raven Principal G. Keith Harmeyer. He likely would receive his diploma but would be barred from attending graduation ceremonies, the principal said.
The incident was the second in a week in which police were called to a Baltimore area prom on a tip from Ms. Nelson that students were using the buses as traveling bars.
2nd prom to be disrupted
On May 20, 16 seniors at the Bryn Mawr School -- a prestigious north Baltimore girls' school -- were sent home from their prom at Towson State University after a bus they had hired was found littered with empty beer cans and bottles.
