SCRANTON -- 19 students from Scranton High School will be cited for underage drinking because police believe they had alcohol on a bus that took them to their school's Friday night football game.
Police say those students got on a district bus at Scranton High School Friday night and headed to Delaware Valley High School in Pike County for the football game. It was there that police and school officials suspected that the group of students had been drinking.
When the Scranton Knights took on the Delaware Valley Warriors in Pike County Friday night, the Scranton School District chartered a school bus to take some of its students on the hour-long trip to the game.
Eastern Pike Regional Police told Newswatch 16 that they found alcohol disguised in Gatorade bottles on the back of the bus.
A witness at the game tipped off officers when they saw a boy vomiting next to the bus.
Police said Scranton School District officials then asked police to give breathalyzer tests to all the students on that bus. 19 of them tested positive for alcohol. They will face underage drinking citations in Pike County.
Word of what happened started to spread among parents picking up their children from Scranton High.
"Like I said, kids will be kids, you know? I'm not saying it's right but kids will be kids," said Leslie Kirchner of Scranton.
"There should be some kind of punishment because they shouldn't be doing that, especially on a school bus," said Marden Pineda of Scranton.
We reached out to Scranton School District's superintendent to see if the district plans to send students on a bus to an away football game again. We did not hear back.
There is no word on whether the 19 cited students will also face consequences from the district.
"I think the school district should really do something about that. There should be consequences to their actions, basically. They really should," said Fran Ayers of Scranton.
According to the chief of the Eastern Pike Regional Police Department, the 19 students who were drinking will receive citations from a magistrate in Pike County.
We made repeated attempts to get comment from district administrators, but our calls were not returned.