CRAIGSVILLE, W.Va. -- Two allegedly drunken passengers posed as Nicholas County high school students and hitched a ride on a bus en route to the first day of classes Thursday morning, police said.
A bus driver thought Bryan Lee Johnson, 21, and Ayla Jade Hodges, 19, were Richwood High School students when they boarded with others at a stop in Craigsville, said Nicholas County Sheriff Wetzel Bennett.
The bus carries both Richwood High School and Richwood Middle School students.
Bennett didn't know where the pair was trying to go but at some point on the journey someone recognized they weren't supposed to be there. Sheriff's deputies and school resource officers were notified and arrested them when they got off the bus at the school, he said.
Johnson registered a blood-alcohol content of .228 -- nearly three times the legal limit of .08 percent -- and Hodges registered a BAC of .192, according to a criminal complaint filed in Nicholas County Magistrate Court.
Police charged both with public intoxication, trespassing and disturbance of a school. They are being held in Central Regional Jail in lieu each of a $3,000 bail.
Bennett said the children were not in any danger. The pair apparently took advantage of the driver who had not yet learned the names and faces of those on his route.
"He certainly wouldn't have let them on if he knew they weren't students and weren't going to school," Bennett said.
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