{"id":2441787,"date":"2019-03-15T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/sheriffs-office-probes-unchaperoned-teen-dance\/"},"modified":"2019-03-17T07:44:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T13:44:16","slug":"sheriffs-office-probes-unchaperoned-teen-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/sheriffs-office-probes-unchaperoned-teen-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheriff\u2019s Office probes unchaperoned teen dance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the third time in the past two months, allegations have surfaced about alcohol and possible drug use by Aspen High School students.<\/p>\n

The latest incident occurred March 7 at a high school club party at Bumps at the base of Buttermilk, where Pitkin County sheriff\u2019s deputies found strong evidence of alcohol use and possible evidence of cocaine consumption, according to reports.<\/p>\n

A uniformed sheriff\u2019s deputy, whose daughter hosted the party, was supposed to be present that night, but had been reassigned to attend a training session, Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo said Friday. Deputy Michael Buglione should have found another deputy to attend the event in his place but didn\u2019t, he said.<\/p>\n

Police reports also indicate that parent chaperones for the party didn\u2019t show up either.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny failure from anyone who works for me is my failure,\u201d DiSalvo said Friday. \u201cI own this. I\u2019m sorry and embarrassed. I expect people in my organization to perform better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buglione, a department veteran, declined to comment on the incident Friday.<\/p>\n

Aspen High School\u2019s H2O Club sponsored and organized the dance March 7 at Bumps, according to a Pitkin County Sheriff\u2019s report. The party began at 8 p.m., and an hour later about 80 high school students were in attendance, the report states.<\/p>\n

An Aspen Skiing Co. employee working at Bumps that night told a Sheriff\u2019s Office investigator she noticed there was no adult supervision at the event.<\/p>\n

\u201c(She) told me there were supposed to be adult chaperones and a uniformed Pitkin County Sheriff\u2019s Office deputy on scene, however no other adults arrived,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

So between 9:30 and 10 p.m., the Skico employee and a colleague \u201cstarted walking laps through and around the Bumps building to check on the kids,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n

They discovered an intoxicated girl in the women\u2019s bathroom and tried to help her, then called deputies to come to the facility for a walk-through \u201cas it was suspected (that) juveniles were using illegal substances and alcohol,\u201d according to a deputy\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

The girl found in the bathroom took an Uber home with her girlfriends, the report states.<\/p>\n

However, when Deputy Anthony Todaro arrived at Bumps about 10:30 p.m., he encountered another young party-goer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stopped to wait for (a fellow deputy) to walk up when I noticed a female vomiting out the passenger window of a silver Lexus SUV parked directly beside me,\u201d Todaro wrote.<\/p>\n

Todaro pulled the car over, discovered the driver was sober and took the intoxicated girl to the Sheriff\u2019s Office to meet with the agency\u2019s juvenile investigator. She was later issued a citation for minor in possession of alcohol, according to the report.<\/p>\n

The next morning, a Sheriff\u2019s Office detective located a \u201csmaller, Zip-Loc plastic bag commonly used to hold illicit drugs\u201d that contained \u201cwhite grains of some type\u201d in a sanitary disposal container in one of the stalls.<\/p>\n

No other evidence of drug use was seen by Skico employees or found by investigators, according to the report. DiSalvo said Friday the baggie hadn\u2019t yet been tested and noted that investigators have no way of knowing when it was disposed of or by whom.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the investigator watched surveillance video from the high school dance of four girls and a boy passing around a soda bottle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe manner in which the group shared the contents of the bottle is not what I would expect if the liquid inside was soda,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

After the party, investigators also found an empty vodka bottle, soda bottles that smelled of alcohol, an unlocked beer cooler and hard liquor storage that was easy to access, according to the report.<\/p>\n

High school students were charged in January with breaking into a downtown lodge and stealing alcohol, as well as vandalizing another hotel. An Aspen High School senior and his parents were charged earlier this week with allowing minors to drink alcohol in their home, and providing cocaine to one underage high school student.<\/p>\n

Tharyn Mulberry, Aspen High School principal, said Friday he hasn\u2019t seen a recent increase in alcohol or drug use on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s an unfortunate concentration of events,\u201d he said. \u201cStudent data indicates there is not an increase (of alcohol or drug consumption) at school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mulberry also pointed out that the Bumps dance was not a school-sanctioned event, though the H2O Club is an official Aspen High club, he said. He said he wasn\u2019t sure of the exact purpose of the H2O Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something we always take very seriously here at school,\u201d he said. \u201c(The recent events) are prompting us to have a dialog with all our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

jauslander@aspentimes.com<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the third time in the past two months, allegations have surfaced about alcohol and possible drug use by Aspen High School students. The latest incident occurred March 7 at a high school club party at Bumps at the base of Buttermilk, where Pitkin County sheriff\u2019s deputies found strong evidence of alcohol use and possible […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2441787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 10:48:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}