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St. Charles tavern to be penalized for 4th violation in 4 months

A downtown St. Charles tavern faces what may turn out to be the stiffest penalty handed down by the liquor commission after a bartender served an underage woman who was arrested on drunken driving charges the same night.

Standing before the city's liquor commission Monday night, The Filling Station owner Peter Milligan entered a guilty plea. He informed the commissioners he fired the bartender, who was also an assistant manager, after learning she not only served the underage woman but also vetoed a bouncer's decision to deny the underage woman entry to the tavern.

"I take this very seriously," Milligan said. "The employee had been working for me for 3½ years. She's always been a good employee, and she came from a good family, but she made an error in judgment. She messed up."

It's the fourth incident that's resulted in either a warning letter or written violation by the police for The Filling Station this year.

The latest case came to the attention of police while an officer patrolled Main Street shortly after midnight Oct. 29. According to a police report, the officer spotted a car containing three people hitting speeds up to 50 mph on the 300 block of East Main Street and began to follow at distance.

The green Volkswagen Jetta repeatedly swerved within its lane, according to the report. Eventually the driver turned into an industrial park, entered a parking lot and made a U-turn back out onto Main Street. When the erratic driving continued, the officer stopped the vehicle.

Upon questioning, the driver, a 20-year-old female, repeatedly denied consuming any alcohol before driving. The officer arrested her after she failed several sobriety tests including a breath test that indicated she had a blood alcohol content of .212, according to the police report.

During the booking process, the police report indicates, the woman told officers she had been drinking at The Filling Station, where a friend worked as a bartender.

An officer located and questioned the bartender, who admitted to serving the woman because she was in the company of a group of people whom she all knew to be at least 21 years of age.

Commissioners didn't have many questions for Milligan after the guilty plea. They went into a closed-door session to debate the appropriate punishment, which won't be announced until a future meeting of the city council.

The penalty may be the most severe yet handed out as this is the sixth incident in the past three years resulting in a warning or written violation by police and the fourth in the past four months.

The Filling Station has already had its late night liquor license privilege suspended twice. In a July incident, the liquor commission also imposed a $1,500 fine paired with legal fees.

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