Police said they found marijuana on a 19-year-old man in a car parked in the lot of a closed business, and then the situation became much more unusual.
Norwalk police gave this account (an accusation not proven in court) of the incident:
At about 7:20 p.m., a police officer driving by the Utopia store at 150 Connecticut Ave. noticed a car in the parking lot of the business, which was closed. Since the parking lot had signs stating that parking was only for customers, the officer stopped to speak with a man who was in the car.
The man, Christopher Feola, 19, of Clinton, crouched down briefly as the officer approached. When the officer spoke with Feola, he saw a multi-colored pipe with a full bowl of a leafy, green, plant-like substance. On the floor of the vehicle was a silver-colored object that looked like a grinder commonly used for marijuana.
Feola turned over both to the police officer. The substance, which tested positive as marijuana, was later weighed by police and turned out to be 1 gram.
Feola was patted down and searched. In one of his pockets, police found a plastic bag containing three separate pieces of folded cardboard with a white powder-like substance on them. Feola said he had no idea what that was.
Police also found a plastic bottle of a type commonly used for prescription medicine. The label had been removed. Inside the bottle was a small, square, wite substance wrapped in aluminum foil. Police planned to send the substance to a toxicology lab to test whether it is LSD or possibly some other illegal drug.
As police were talking with Feola and searching him and his vehicle, a man who identified himself as a friend -- and who turned out to be the owner of the car Feola was in -- came across the street to ask what was going on.
The man, a Norwalk resident, said he didn't know anything about drugs being in the car or on Feola. The man was searched by police, who found nothing on him and who did not arrest him.
As police were talking to this second man, a woman drove by and was heard to say, "My God, that's my son's car!"
Police spoke with the woman, a Greenwich resident who first told police she was running errands, then told police she came by to see her son and at one point said she was going to pick up her son to take him to a tutor after the son had left school early.
Police pointed out to her that it was late on a Sunday, a rather unusual time for someone to be seeing a tutor. Asked why she had given a number of different reasons for being at that location, the woman said she was simply in shock from seeing the police at her son's car. She later decided to say nothing more. Neither she nor her son were arrested.
Feola's charges included third-degree criiminal trespass, possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana (a first offense), possession of drugs and illegal possession of drugs within 1,500 feet of a school or day-care center. His bond was initially set at $500 and he was scheduled to appear Oct. 28 in state Superior Court in Norwalk if he paid the bond.
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