State thwarted in effort to track teens' alcohol

It has been nearly a year since a fiery car crash killed four Wakefield High School students returning to Raleigh from a basketball game in Greenville. Authorities know the driver was drunk, but they still can't say for sure where he got the alcohol.

The case underscores how difficult it is for police to track down the people and businesses that supply teenagers with beer, wine and liquor.

In 2005 -- the year for which the latest figures are available -- the state Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement made 4,440 arrests connected to underage drinking. ALE investigates more cases involving teen drinking than any other North Carolina agency but succeeds in prosecuting someone for supplying the alcohol only about half the time.

"We may be able to track the alcohol to a distributor and retail location, but if you get any break in the chain, it sort of stops your prosecution," said ALE Director Mike Robertson. "This is not an easy investigation for anybody to do."

ALE and other law enforcement agencies say they run into another problem: Crash survivors often refuse to provide information, and friends do not want to talk if it could get them in trouble.

"There's a huge wall of silence," said Lt. Timothy Tomczak of the Raleigh Police Department.

Young people are reluctant to talk with police because of a sense of loyalty, said Will Byrd, a ninth-grader at Ravenscroft High School and a family friend of a Wakefield High senior killed in a crash last month.

"If someone does that, you know they can't be trusted anymore," Byrd said.

Since 2003, the state Highway Patrol has investigated 38 fatal alcohol-related crashes in which the driver was 14 to 18 years old. About one in 10 fatal alcohol-related accidents in the state involves underage drivers, according to the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission.

Prosecuting the people who give alcohol to young people is a key to preventing deaths, Robertson said.

"It will never stop it, but it has a deterring effect," he said. "You do it not just to write a ticket. You want to stop them from doing it again."

ALE agents ran into roadblocks while trying to find the source of the alcohol in the crash March 4 crash that killed four Wakefield High seniors after their vehicle swerved out of control on a ramp off U.S. 64/264.

Raleigh police found beer cans on the ground outside the teenagers' Mazda RX-8. ALE agents used bar codes on the cans to track them to a distributing company, which led them to a convenience store in Greenville. But there were no arrests.

"There was no video surveillance in the store," Robertson said. "We could not prove conclusively the alcohol was purchased there."

ALE agents begin their crash investigations by working backward. When possible, agents comb through the vehicle immediately after a wreck for receipts, beer cans and bottles to find where the underage drinkers bought the alcohol. They look for fake IDs and talk to survivors to determine where the young people were before the fatal crash. Then they try to interview the people who last saw them.

Lew Nuckles, Wake County's ABC law enforcement chief, said his agency made nearly 600 arrests last year involving underage, alcohol-related violations. Those include possession, drinking, purchases with the use of fake IDs or getting an older person to buy the alcohol. Agents were able to trace the sources of the alcohol in about a third of the cases.

Nuckles said underage drinking in Wake County occurs mostly when fake driver's licenses are used.

"In this high-tech era, it's amazing what's being done," he said. "We shut down two ID labs at N.C. State last year, right in the dorm rooms. They had the computers, the proper printers and laminates. It was elaborate. Just like the DMV."