Middle School Students Caught With Cocaine At Anti-Drug Rally

http://www.wftv.com/news/17850838/detail.html

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[size=+1]Middle School Students Caught With Cocaine At Anti-Drug Rally[/size]
[size=-1]Thursday, October 30, 2008 – updated: 5:36 pm EDT October 30, 2008[/size]

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The timing couldn't have been worse. Just when teachers had gathered all students at Howard Middle School (see map) for an anti-drug rally, two students were caught with cocaine on campus.

The kids were sitting in the audience learning how to "Just Say No" and according the charging affidavit one of the boys told police he'd simply found the bag of cocaine on his way to school. That's a story police don't seem to buy.

Their mug shots are probably not the pictures that Trane Chenault and Victor Bertil, both 14 years old, will use to remember their eighth grade year at Howard Middle School. The pair was arrested at anti-drug assembly Wednesday when police say a teacher caught the young men with a baggie of cocaine.

"I mean, crack cocaine, in a middle school? I'm shocked," parent Roni Wood told Eyewitness News.

It is Drug Awareness Week at the A-rated school, but at the school-wide assembly Wednesday, where kids were given "drug-free" t-shirts, a teacher said she saw Chenault passing a small, white plastic bag to Bertil. A field test determined that the bag contained cocaine and the young men were arrested on felony drug charges inside their middle school.

"If the other kids saw it and they were arrested, at least it shows in the real world what's going to happen," parent Mary Robinson said.

Eyewitness News stopped by Chenault's apartment, but no one was home. In the housing complex where Bertil grew up, a family friend said Bertil, at least, was probably just an innocent bystander.

"Vic probably didn't know what it was. The kid was probably showing it to him. And if a teacher comes up, that's probably his first reaction, to hide it," family friend Jose Rodriguez said.

But at Howard Middle, the very thought of drugs in a middle school has some ready to pull their children out. Others worry drugs may be more common than most parents would guess.

The school district can't say much about the case, but said both young men have already been suspended and the district has recommended that they be expelled.

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sadly ironic