Underage booze party nets 4; Kids text “MAD COPS" warning to alert others

PERU — A State Police trooper said Wednesday that he walked into an underage drinking party Sunday night off Old Valley Road, where unwitting booze-toting teens kept arriving, along with a 37-year-old man who brought alcohol and his girlfriend's teenage daughter.

"It was kind of ridiculous," Trooper Jason Wing said. Eventually, teens began texting others about the presence of police and warned them to go elsewhere, he said.

Wing said he was patrolling the Peru area, checking known teen party locations, when he found Sunday night's party site at about 10 p.m. He said he confronted the first person to arrive.

"As I'm standing there, more and more people show up with alcohol and admit they have alcohol in their vehicles," Wing said.

Maine Game Warden Norman Lewis and Oxford County Sheriff's Deputy George Cayer learned of the gathering crowd and quickly responded to back up Wing.

While questioning those arriving, Wing said David Davenport, 37, of Canton drove in to drop off his girlfriend's 17-year-old daughter and two six-packs of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

"He said he bought the alcohol from Canton's Big Apple store for four teen girls," Wing said. "I will say that the Big Apple had no clue he was doing that."

Wing said Davenport had smoked a joint on the way and had a roach and a quarter-ounce of marijuana with him. Wing summoned Davenport on charges of supplying liquor to minors and possession of a usable amount of marijuana.

He also summoned the 17-year-old girl with Davenport and Jake Pomeroy, 20, of Dixfield, on charges of possession of alcohol by a minor; and Joshua Palmer, 18, of Peru, on a charge of possession of alcohol by consumption.

The two young men brought their own alcohol, Wing said.

Pomeroy, Palmer and Davenport will be arraigned Nov. 3 in Rumford District Court; the teen girl will appear Nov. 5 in the same court.

Wing said he didn't charge Davenport with operating under the influence of drugs because he didn't consider Davenport impaired at the time.

The 11 people who arrived at the party were from Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Jay, Livermore Falls, Mexico, Peru and Rumford.

"They were texting each other to the party, so I confiscated all the cell phones," along with the alcohol, Wing said.

"There is no doubt in my mind that more would have shown up, just by the mass quantity of text messages these kids were getting," he said.

One cell phone message said there had been a party on Saturday night in Carthage.

Another cell phone owner let him see a message warning incoming party-goers to stay away from the Peru party.

"When I looked at it, I saw 'MAD COPS OUT,'" Wing said.

He said Old Valley Road is a common underage drinking spot, one that he and other police routinely check during patrols.

"They will park at the end of the trail, and sometimes four-wheel-drive trucks take them into the woods to a spot where they usually have a bonfire and drink," Wing said.

"This shows that some of their parents think it's OK to buy kids alcohol, thinking they will stay there, but some of the kids said they weren't staying at this party, so we'd have another occurrence of what happened in April," Wing said.

After an underage party on April 20 in Peru, two 16-year-old boys from Peru crashed their car into a tree off Ridge Road and suffered serious injuries.

"Clearly, this is a problem that most parents aren't caring about until it affects them," Wing said. "I have no doubt that (the kids) didn't learn their lessons from this, so there will be more summonses issued in a couple of months, for sure."

tkarkos@sunjournal.com