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Amherst County Drug Bust Press Conference
Superintendent John Walker speaks at a press conference in Amherst County on Friday, May 16, 2008, announcing drug charges against seven current and former high school students.
Peter O’Brian Rose (left) and Jody Vaughn Ramsey were arrested this morning on marijuana distribution charges.
Seven Amherst County High School students face drug charges after a 10-month investigation in which a sheriff’s deputy posed as a student.
One of the students charged was 18-year-old Peter O’Brian Rose, the Lancers’ starting quarterback last year.
Rose was charged with two counts of distribution of drugs within 1,000 feet of the school, both felonies, and two counts of distribution of marijuana.
“We think of school as a place of education,” Amherst Sheriff Jimmy Ayers said. “It should be free of drugs and alcohol. This is not an easy thing when you are dealing with students.”
Rose was the Lancers’ starting quarterback in 2006 and 2007. He helped lead the team to back-to-back state titles in his junior and senior years and was named Virginia Group AA Player of the Year by the Associated Press and the Virginia High School League Coaches Association.
He signed a letter of intent with Virginia Tech in February. How the charges will affect his scholarship is unclear. Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer, who was in Georgia on Friday, said he would not make a statement on Rose’s situation until he finds out all the details, according to Tech sports information director Dave Smith.
Scott Abell, the former Lancers head football coach who recently left to become the offensive coordinator at Washington & Lee, released a statement Friday saying he is “surprised and shocked” and that Rose had “never given anyone a day’s trouble. We’re going to pray for him and his family right now.”
Another student charged — Jody Vaughn Ramsey, 18 — is a senior and the starting catcher for the Lancers varsity baseball team. He was charged with one count of distribution of marijuana. He was a top offensive player for the Lancers, batting .364 going into the Seminole District Tournament, which began Monday.
Ramsey’s coach, Mike Padgett, said during a pre-season interview that Ramsey had an offer to play baseball for Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville.
Four other students who were arrested were juveniles, and police have not released their names. A fifth student has been charged but not arrested. They face multiple drug charges, including marijuana distribution, imitation cocaine distribution, and distributing imitation controlled substances on school property.
“We will not in any way let this tarnish or diminish what we do,” said Amherst Schools Superintendent John Walker. “We will not be gauged by the activity of a very few individuals.”
The undercover deputy, whom Ayers declined to name, was enrolled at the high school as a senior at the start of this school year. She made 18 purchases from the seven students, and seven of those purchases were made on school property, authorities said.
Three of the juveniles arrested are held in the Lynchburg Detention Center. Rose and Ramsey were processed at the Amherst County Jail and released on bond.
Walker said the investigation began as a response of complaints received from students, parents and the community.
“We heard many concerns from students and parents about possible drug activity by Amherst High School students,” Walker said. “The overwhelming majority of students want our schools to be safe and conducive to learning.”
Ayers said the sheriff’s office has attempted twice before to put a deputy in undercover in the school system with “mixed results.”
“I don’t consider it a radical move,” Ayers said. “It is what it took to curb this activity and we had exhausted other means.”
Walker said he hopes this bust allowed them to reach these seven students early as well as serve to prevent others from following the same path.
“We can get them earlier, before the problems build,” Walker said. “This isn’t unique to Amherst County High School. When these students chose to participate, they put themselves and their classmates in danger and we can’t tolerate that.”
Ayers said the undercover officer is no longer in the school system and will be known to the charged students since she will be involved in their court hearings.
He said the use of an undercover deputy helped to infiltrate the drug distribution ring with more success than the school resource officers, drug-sniffing canines, and other deputies could.
Ayers said the undercover deputy made all the connections to purchase the drugs on school property, but some exchanges were made in other locations.
“It was a very limited number of people who knew about it,” Ayers said. “Not even the (school resource officers) knew about it.”
The deputy is 23 years old, Ayers said.
“She’s just glad its over with,” he said.
School is out of session for the summer on May 30.
Staff writer Nathan Warters and Amherst New Era Progress staff writer Laura Clark contributed to this report.
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Reader Reactions
so the seniors lose their scholarships and the drug supplier is still out there.
it’s funny… you would think that any civilized person representing the law, school administration, etc. would intervene and gain an understanding of why they are selling pot and provide any type of therapy/assistance to resolve instead of CLEARLY setting up high school kids and potentially ruining the rest of their lives over selling freaking pot… which in my honest opinion should be decriminalized.
way to go amherst county! way to go!!
Truthseeker, how do you know what the “facts” are? Were you there? If so maybe you should come forward. How is the police doing their job a bad thing? I bet you would be the first to complain when you feel they don’t. Oh that right you do. I find it hard to feel sorry for kids who sell drugs at school.(see… I’m assuming that’s true because it was reported by the news) No matter how bright their future may be. Pot is still illegal, whether you think it should be or not. Pot has no place in school…ever. You don’t like the way things are don’t speak the “truth” and question authority in an anonymous posting, run for Congress.
freedom, how can you say that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime when they haven’t been punished yet? They have only been charged. There were only two choices here: continue to let them sell drugs to other kids at will, or to arrest and charge them for selling drugs.
SELLING DRUGS IS A CRIME. They knew it was a crime and they knew the possible consequences. It was their decision, and their decision alone, to sell drugs, knowing that if they were caught, it could ruin their lives. You can bet that Mr. Rose knew his scholarship could be withdrawn if he got caught. They have nobody to blame but themselves, and they have no more right to get away with it than an inner-city drug dealer does.
The dealer is a vital link in the illegal drug trade; it’s how the drugs get from a major supplier to the user, whose life may very well end up being ruined by drugs. Someone under the influence of drugs might get behind the wheel and kill someone. How can anyone possibly think a drug dealer is an innocent victim? A dealer preys on others and does not deserve any sympathy from anyone.
You say, “we loose good kids not because of d.a.r.e.but poor gov. that does nothing to protect its people,,“. When the police take a drug dealer out of circulation, that IS the government protecting its people.
freedom, and all the rest of you who seem to agree with him—thanks very much. I get it now:
Kids selling drugs to other kids = Good, clean fun
Police arresting drug dealers = Nazi Germany
Those poor innocent kids had no idea that they were breaking the law and that bad things might happen to them because of it. Awwwww… life is so unfair when you’re a teenage drug dealer.
jouxster, nobody knows how much time these kids may or may not get, and it seems really premature to be complaining about the expense to taxpayers of 20 years in prison. I doubt that dressing them in pink and sending them somewhere to be made fun of falls within the sentencing guidelines, but they may just get probation or a short sentence and community service, especially if they have no prior convictions. That may be enough to wake them up to the future they’ll have if they continue down the path they’ve been on.
Drugs are bad and it’s not good for society. Sending young kids to jail for a long time is not good for society as well. Listen to yourself and think. If these kids have punishment without education where will they be in the future? Back to being punished again. I think it’s bologna that I and OTHER Taxpayers have to pay for their jail time. Let these kids dress in pink, work in a place where they are laughed at and then move on to something better. The penal system now and the state of our lack of meaningful manufacturing jobs are helping to influence this behavior. I’d say embarrass them and move on. Or.. put them in jail for 20 years and be done with it. (then get ready to arrest them again when they get out cause they will be worthless to society.)
I do not get you people. It appears you would rather have kids selling drugs to other kids than to have a safe environment to learn in. If your child was injured, killed or caught buying, you would be complaining that the police was not doing enough. regardless how they got here and where they came from, they were stopped or slowed. For all those complaining, I don’t see you in the school stopping it. You say there is a problem but cry when something is done. I am glad for it and wish all the local departments had the same option to have a deputy be one of the students. Just a shame after all the work, the courts will allow them to plea to lessor charges and walk. But the same people complaining here will rejoice because the dealer got off easy. Just remember that next time you are victimized by a crackhead, you wanted his dealer freed.
Truthseeker I guess the “Truth” has come out. You are a pot smoking hippy. You post all your opinions as if they are fact. Do you really think that the news stories are always accurate and that is the whole story? You spout all your conspiracy theories online, maybe you should smoke less pot it is making you paranoid.
I had no idea that there were so many pro-drug people in the Lynchburg area. Almost everyone who has posted here seems to think, for one reason or another, that the kids should have been allowed to continue to sell and use drugs and that they’re just innocent victims.
It sounds as though most, if not all, of the kids who were caught were charged with distribution of drugs. That means they are drug dealers. Since when are drug dealers innocent victims? If they had been 30 years old and standing on a street corner in downtown Lynchburg, would you think they’re so innocent? These kids know very well that selling and using drugs is illegal, and they know what the penalties are. It was their decision to do it anyway.
And, freedom, illegal drugs don’t just come across the Mexican border—they’re smuggled into the country from all directions, in all sorts of ways, as they have been for 100 years or more. Just because they make it into our country doesn’t mean that people like these kids have to sell and use them. Using your logic, if someone kills another person with a gun, it’s the fault of the people who made the guns available, and not the person who CHOSE to kill someone.
If this drug bust had taken place anywhere else, you’d all think the police had done a great job. Why so many of you think it’s OK for high school students to sell and use illegal drugs is beyond me.
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