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Hays student teacher jailed after drug bust

HAYS -- A previously scheduled visit by dogs trained to detect drugs paid off Tuesday with the seizure of a large quantity of marijuana from the car of a student teacher at Thomas More Prep-Marian High School.

Blaine Dryden, an investigator for the Hays Police Department, said officers found 36.8 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of the 23-year-old man's car and seized an additional 2.3 pounds from his apartment.

Dryden said officials of the private school were tipped by an e-mail from a former student who said a student teacher was dealing drugs. Dryden said he obtained warrants to search both the man's car and his apartment.

Jean Ross, the school's president, said the drug-detecting dogs had originally been scheduled to come in December but the visit had to be postponed. She said that "purely by chance" the visit was rescheduled for Tuesday.

Dryden said at least two dogs indicated the presence of drugs in the student teacher's car, meaning that even without the warrant that he already had obtained the vehicle could have been searched.

"I was expecting maybe a pound at the most," the officer said. "I was taken aback. I was really surprised."

The man taken into custody, a student at Fort Hays State University, is from Dodge City, Dryden said. David Basgall, an assistant Ellis County attorney who is handling the case, said today that the man hadn't yet been formally charged and was in custody on $30,000 bond.

Ross said the man had been practice teaching in biology at the high school since Jan. 3.

Dryden said he hadn't determined if the student teacher had sold drugs at the school.

"I imagine those who could say if there had been probably went home and flushed it away," he said.