Students arrested in auto lab

This archived article was written by: Morgan Verdi

On March 20, 2014, at 10:38 p.m. USU Eastern Police Officer C. Steele was contacted by Price City Dispatch and advised that campus security officer, Jacob Roberts, located three-intoxicated-male subjects inside the auto mechanic shop. Officer Roberts was in the McDonald Career Center completing lock-ups when he heard voices coming from inside the shop area. He went inside to see what was going on and found the three subjects, one of them passed out.
Upon his arrival, Officer Steele stated, “It was obvious that all three male subjects were intoxicated, their balance was poor, their eyes bloodshot and their speech slurred, not to mention the strong odor of alcohol coming from them.” When the subjects were asked, all three quickly denied having consumed alcohol. They told the officers of a pact they made earlier in the night to make a bad decision and they shook hands on it.
The bad decision they made together was to go back into the auto shop after hours and work on vehicles while being intoxicated. Officer Steele asked all three gentlemen their names, ages and if they were students at USU Eastern. One of the subjects said he was under 21 and lived off campus. He said he was a student of the USU Eastern Auto Mechanic class. The two other subjects advised the same.
Price City Officers Stephan Regruto and Kelly Maynes arrived to assist. Roberts showed the officers where he located the subjects. On a toolbox where the three subjects were located, the officer’s found a marijuana pipe full of a green leafy substance that was consistent with marijuana. When informed about the suspected marijuana, Officer Steele asked the three subjects if they knew anything about it.
Two of the subjects were cooperative and said that one of them owned the pipe and the other owned the marijuana. Both admitted to smoking marijuana from the glass pipe earlier in the night while on campus and both said that the other subject had nothing to do with the marijuana or the pipe and that he was actually a good kid who they pressured into drinking. The subjects were asked to sit on a bench, as their balance was poor. One of the subjects laid on the ground after almost falling over twice.
Officers also located three large bottles of rum that were partially full and two empty bottles of vodka. When asked how they got into the shop, one of the subjects said earlier in the day during class, he put a wedge in the door so it wouldn’t lock allowing them to return later on that night. The three then went to their residence off campus and started consuming alcohol another friend had purchased for them. This is when they made the pact “to make a bad decision, and once you shake hands, you have to follow through with it.”
All three subjects agreed to submit to a portable intoxilyzer test and all blew over a .100 BrAC. Due to the totality of the circumstances including all three being intoxicated and a danger too themselves if left alone, with two admitting to possession of marijuana and paraphernalia and all three subjects trespassing on campus after hours inside the auto shop area, all three were booked into the Carbon County Jail.
Subject one was booked on the charges of intoxication, possession of marijuana in a drug-free zone, possession of paraphernalia in a drug-free zone and criminal trespass for being inside the auto shop unlawfully after school hours.
Subject two was also booked on intoxication, possession of marijuana in a drug-free zone, possession of paraphernalia in a drug-free zone and criminal trespass for being inside the auto shop unlawfully after school hours.
Subject three was booked on the charges of intoxication and criminal trespass for being inside the auto shop unlawfully after school hours.
All three subjects cooperated as much as they could and as intoxicated as they were, they made it clear their instructor had no idea they were inside the shop. Subject three will appear before the Carbon County Justice Court on his misdemeanor charges. Subjects one and two will need to appear before the Seventh District Court Judge of Carbon County as their charges include a class-A misdemeanor: possession in a drug-free zone.