City Council Revokes Alcohol License
The store is under investigation for possibly selling alcohol to minors Feb. 19, the night 16-year-old Cheyenne Sauls of Villa Rica was killed in an alcohol-related car accident.
The Douglasville City Council voted to revoke the alcoholic beverage package sales license of "Rocky" Patel, agent outlet manager, for the Chapel Hill Package Store at 2911 Chapel Hill Road because of violations of City Code during Monday night's city council meeting.
The council determined that the package store had violated Section 10-4 regarding the sale of alcohol to minors and failure to verify age at the time of sale. The store is under investigation for possibly selling alcohol to minors Feb. 19, the night 16-year-old Cheyenne Sauls of Villa Rica was killed in an alcohol-related car accident. Read prior Patch stories here, here and here.
The council vote was unanimous with Councilmember LaShun Burr Danley abstaining.
Alan Begner, the lawyer representing Patel and the package store, said they will appeal the council's decision.
"We're disappointed," Begner said after the meeting. "We think we showed we're entitled to aggressive discipline but much less severe discipline first time out."
Begner said the package store will be able to continue to sell alcohol during the appeal process, under state law.
Begner added, "Both those kids used fake IDs (in the past). I think (the package store) did something wrong. They did not demand the ID be shown again.
"Nothing good comes out of this," he said. "I look at this just being a failure to not check IDs; for which, 11 out of 14 hearings in the last 10 years got either 30 days suspension or probation and (the city council) deviated from that based upon the fact that the young girl died, which was of course is very tragic, but shouldn't be a reason to give the revocation order on the first offense in nine years."
Several resdients chose to speak for and against the package store. The video of their comments is included with this article.
Richard Nichols
5:21 am on Wednesday, April 6, 2011
I have chatted with Rocky Patel off and on for several years. Shortly before New Years, Rocky told me that he had several fears. First, he mentioned that when someone came into his store who he had carded a number of times-- fairly often people would act annoyed that he kept carding them and some would threaten to never come back because he was just doing his job.
Second, he mentioned that his biggest fear was being alone at the store during the last hour or two each evening because his personal safety was at risk. This may be a blessing in disguise for Rocky and his family, as Mr. Patel could at any moment have been held up, robbed and/or killed by criminals. Many of us remember the late night murder of the Circle K employee during the duluge in September 2009.
As far as carding goes, I always showed Rocky my I.D. when buying anything just as I would at Krogers or Publix--and I never gave it a second thought. He is/was one of the nicest local merchants I've run across, so this is indeed a severe turn of events for him and his family, in my opinion.
This does not diminish the tremdously sad state of affairs surrounding the death and injuries suffered by the teens. Young adults will always and forever experiment with limits, so our laws require that we sometimes protect us from ourselves.
Richard Nichols
5:42 am on Wednesday, April 6, 2011
One of the videos on Patch shows Rocky Patels' lawyer requesting that the business be taken over completely by another person (a former in-law of Rocky's) with the same last name "Patel." This was perhaps the dumbest idea of all as it violates common sense, and the city council could see right through that. What the lawyer might have mentioned is that the taxes on liquor would no longer be flowing into the city of Douglasville from that source.
I guess people who purchase alcoholic beverages will just go to one of the other sources in this area, and that is all that will be accomplished other than causing Mr. Patel and his wife to find another career. I know he is devastated that his mistake that evening led to disaster for Cheyenne and the Sauls family, but that is what it was, a mistake.
Let's hope that anyone selling this drug called alcohol will be more careful in the future. It would suit me fine if alcohol were banished from the face of the earth. It has been an element in so many tragedies. Neither the Sauls nor the Patels deserved this turn of events.