Husband turns wife in for letting daughter smoke pot, police say

YORK, S.C. — A York County mother said her daughter came to her and told her she was facing peer pressure at school to try marijuana.

Deputies said that mother was arrested after she handled the situation by buying the drug for her daughter, and smoking it with her.

Jennifer Romero, 36, is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. According to a police report, Romero said she'd rather have her 14-year-old daughter experiment with drugs with her than somewhere else, unsupervised.

According to the report, Romero's husband came home from working out of town this weekend and found out about the drug buy. He then called and reported his wife to police. She was arrested late Sunday night.

Deputies said Jennifer Romero bought pot Thursday at the tennis courts in the Mill Creek Falls neighborhood, where she lives, near Clover.

She admitted meeting a man at the courts to do the deal. Channel 9 was not able to find out how she knew a drug dealer and where to buy the pot.

Romero told deputies that she, her daughter and a friend then drove to McDowell Park in Charlotte to smoke it together.

"Hearing that disturbs me quite a bit," said neighbor Ed Collevecchio, who also lives in Mill Creek Falls off Highway 274. "I don't understand how any mother could encourage that."

Collevecchio and his wife, Pauline, live right behind the tennis courts where deputies said Romero bought the drugs.

"We've never seen anything suspicious here, and it shook me to hear about," Pauline said.

Channel 9 tried to speak to Walter Romero, who made the call to deputies, after learning from his son what his wife allegedly did.

He did not want to comment about it.

According to the report, a friend of the family had earlier overheard the mother and daughter talking about baking marijuana into some brownies to attempt to get high that way. The friend thought they were joking. She told deputies that they later decided they shouldn't smoke pot in the house because the odor would linger.

Sheriff's deputies often see parents opting to give their children drugs or alcohol in their own home, feeling that it's better than letting them experiment unsupervised with friends. Sheriff's spokesman Trent Faris warned parents that it's still illegal.

"Don't go out and say, 'Let's go buy some weed because I'm the cool dad or the cool mom, who wants to smoke weed with their kid.' Wrong thing to do," Faris said.

Jennifer Romero was released from jail on Monday night.

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