City Council Revokes Alcohol License

The Douglasville City Council voted to revoke the alcoholic beverage package sales license of "Rocky" Patel, agent outlet manager, for the 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.