The Red and Black

Red and Black Blogs

February 27th, 2008

Bad joy ride

Seven University students thought they were being smart instead of drinking and driving last week. But their night still ended at the Clarke County Jail after they ditched their cabbie.

According to the University Police report:

A cabbie flagged down a University Police officer on Finley Street early Friday. The United Taxi Van driver told the officer that eight people left the vehicle with out paying fare. The driver pointed the people out to the officer who approached them, asking for their identification. While talking with the group, the officer noticed the smell of alcohol on their breathes and noted seven of them were underage.

The officer arrested University students Erin Ohara, Anthony Touart, Rachel Marie Babin, Jin Young Choi, Michelle Lynn Caruso, Tyler Harrison Hurd and Jean Pierre Dumenil and charged them with underage possession of alcohol. Ohara, Caruso and Babin also were charged with possession of a fake ID. The eighth student was not arrested because he was over 21.

Hurd paid the cab fare and the driver said he did not want to press charges.

— Juanita, jcousins@randb.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Crimedawg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Bad joy ride”

Jean Pierre Dumenil February 28th, 2008 at 7:07 pm

I was in this taxi, and I can tell you that this story is a complete fabrication.

We did not leave the taxi and we did not refuse to pay, we simply informed the driver this is not where we wanted to go and we would not pay him to take us here.

The taxi driver heard us say “we’re not going to pay you HERE, we will pay you where we told you to take us”, and overreacted by getting out of the car and flagging down a cop.
Ron March 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm

This is so typical of Athens cabs. They refuse to take you certain places and then when you get in the cab they force you to get out someplace where you dont even want to go and then demand extra money. They basically take advantage of drunk people. ACCPD is doing nothing about this.
As far as you getting arrested for underage possession, you chose to drink so you run the risk of going to jail anytime you come into contact with police.