Littleton Road Liquors Loses License For Eight Days After Selling to Minors

Following the sixth recorded sale of alcohol to minors in the past ten years and the second sale this year alone, will lose its license to sell alcohol for eight days, following a Board of Selectmen decision on Tuesday night.

The most recent case occurred at 10:10 p.m. on May 8, when Westford Police stopped the vehicle of a suspect under the age of 21 who allegedly purchased alcohol from the store approximately 25 minutes  earlier.

When the officer on the case asked the clerk on duty at the store that night about the incident, he recalled selling the alcohol and admitted not carding the suspects despite a requirement under the law to card anyone that appears under 30.

At that point, the officer asked for the security footage from the sale from the manager, who talked to the clerk in “a foreign language” and told the officer that the camera stopped working just five minutes prior to the sale.

Several days earlier, a clerk magistrate in the Ayer District Court heard a case from another incident occurring in February in an incident that included a 20-year-old that was not carded and another 20-year-old who possessed a counterfeit New Jersey driver’s license.

Littleton Road Liquors owner Duang Keophila offered little testimony, deferring to her attorney, Augusta Dixon.

Dixon told the board that Keophilia had purchased a new card checking system and had recently begun asking for additional forms of identification for customers with out-of-state licenses, as well as noting that the case with the clerk magistrate was still pending.

However, the board was not swayed after hearing from Dixon and Keophilia.

“We don’t want to put you out of business, but there are also some consequences when you sell to a minor,” said Selectmen Val Wormell.

Due to the fact that Westford’s current liquor licensing bylaw came into effect in 2010, only the two more recent cases were taken into account during the meeting.

The decision will remove the store’s license Monday, June 18 and every other Monday until late September.