First Arrest Of Golf Cart Driver Left Teens In A Bind

The traffic stop on a rural road in Washington County, Va., split up a trio of young, out-of-town campers and left two disoriented juveniles without driver’s licenses to navigate their friend’s car late Monday.

The three friends from Virginia Beach were lost and looking for a convenience store when a county sheriff’s deputy pulled over the car and arrested the driver, 20-year-old Ryan Montgomery, on a charge of possession of marijuana. Montgomery was arrested again hours later for driving a golf cart on Interstate 81.

Deputy Tom Dula said he confiscated a marijuana bowl and a plastic baggie of the drug from Montgomery, and took another baggie with pills from a 17-year-old passenger who claimed they were prescribed antidepressants. Dula then left the scene without verifying that one of the juveniles had a driver’s license.

Neither of the teens had valid licenses, according to the Saltville police officer who stopped them around 1 a.m. Tuesday when they rolled through the town, lost and nearly out of gas.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Dula said he asked Colton Pierce if he had a driver’s license, and the juvenile responded that he did but it was at the site where the trio had camped Sunday night. The other passenger, Montgomery’s girlfriend – also 17 – had a learner’s permit and was the only one carrying identification.

Dula, a 26-year-old deputy who joined the force in February, was unable to verify whether Pierce had a license because of the poor reception of his police radio, he said.

“I had no reason not to believe [Pierce],” he said. “I had no reason to hold them.”

Pierce, who returned to Virginia Beach on Tuesday, disputed Dula’s account in a phone interview, calling it a “110 percent lie.”

“He never asked me for anything,” Pierce said. “He never made sure I had a license.”

Montgomery’s girlfriend could not be reached Wednesday, and her name could not be confirmed. Montgomery did not return a message left on his cell phone.

Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman defended Dula’s judgment, noting that Montgomery became verbally abusive when arrested, and that any sheriff’s first concern is for a deputy’s safety.

“He’s out there by himself, with backup several miles away,” Newman said.

Dula confirmed that a reserve deputy was riding with him.

Asked if he were concerned by the situation the juveniles were left in, Newman said: “It’s always a concern when you have juveniles out who may be under the influence.” He added, “We don’t know if they were using drugs or not.”

Both Pierce and his mother maintained that the pills he carried were prescribed antidepressants and that he was not abusing them.

“The prescription is old, and he probably should have thrown it out,” Debbie Alekna, Pierce’s mother, said by phone.

Dula said he has sent the pills to a lab for analysis.

As Dula processed Montgomery, he said Pierce and the 17-year-old female drove off looking for a gas station.

“I had no idea where I was,” said Pierce, who was issued his learner’s permit in January. “The cop told me to leave. My phone was dead. I had no way of getting in touch with anybody. I was screwed.”

Saltville Police Officer Randall Brickey said both Pierce and Montgomery’s girlfriend produced learner’s permits when he stopped them with their bright lights on around 1 a.m.

“I’m quite surprised one of them didn’t get hurt,” Brickey said.

He brought them inside the town hall, and later kept watch as they slept in the car. The police fed them breakfast the next day, and Alekna picked them up Tuesday morning.

Montgomery, who was released from the Southwest Regional Jail on bond before dawn Tuesday, apparently got a ride to Exit 19, where he walked in the wrong direction from his campsite. Lost, he found a golf cart at a private residence and turned it onto the interstate in an effort to be pulled over, said Dula, who arrested him again -  this time for grand larceny.

Montgomery was held in lieu of a $2,500 secured bond until his father arrived Tuesday evening and bailed him out, according to jail officials and Saltville’s police chief.

Chief Steve Surber kept the Acura at the police station until Montgomery and his father arrived Tuesday to pick it up. The car belongs to Montgomery’s mother’s boyfriend, according to Surber and Alekna.

Alekna said the trio’s misadventure began with a Google search for a remote campground in West Virginia, but they apparently stumbled upon a forest by Tumbling Creek.

Dula said he went out looking for the campers after receiving a report from a retired state trooper who oversees the campground where they had stopped, and who suspected they were runaways.

They had arrived Sunday night, in the middle of a downpour, looking for “somewhere secluded and away from everything,“ Dula recalled.
Said Alekna of her 17-year-old son, Pierce: “He was going camping. He just needed to relax after a stressful academic year. To get away from it all.“