A 31-year-old man had some marijuana, and a 21-year-old woman was found to have some ecstasy pills after an officer on patrol stopped a station wagon without a front license plate, police said.
Darien police gave this account (including accusations not proven in court):
An officer driving west on Stephen Mather Road at 11:40 a.m. on Saturday saw a 2000 Subaru Outback without a front license plate approaching from the opposite direction. The officer turned around, followed the station wagon and had it stop.
There was a plate on the back of the car, but a check with state Department of Motor Vehicles found no record for that license plate.
As the officer talked with the driver, a resident of Lansing Street in Bridgeport, the smell of marijuana came from inside the vehicle. A used blunt (hollowed-out cigar filled with marijuana) was in the ash tray.
The driver said the license plate belonged to him but wasn’t the proper one for the car, which he said he had just bought from a friend in Stamford.
Both the driver and his passenger, a resident of East Avenue in Bridgeport, said they had both smoked marijuana earlier in the morning. He said they were headed to Bridgeport from Stamford. A police spokesman said there was no indication in the report as to why they were taking such a roundabout route between the two cities.
When the passenger opened her purse, she held it away from the officer so he couldn’t see inside. The officer asked what was in the bag, and she became upset.
The officer looked inside the purse and saw a small, green glassine bag containing a yellow and a purple pill, each with a cartoon character stamped on it. They looked like ecstasy pills and later a “tentative” test indicated they contained the chemical MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy. The passenger later admitted that that’s what the pills were.
The driver was issued a misdemeanor summons for possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana (three grams were found in the car), improper use of a license plate, failure to insure his vehicle and operating an unregistered motor vehicle. He is scheduled to appear Nov. 4 in state Superior Court in Stamford.
The passenger was arrested and taken to police headquarters on a charge of possession of a halucinogen. She is to appear in court the same date and place.