NATION : Police Probe Teacher Drugging

TROY, Mich. — Police are trying to determine whether LSD or another drug was put in the coffee of a high school English teacher who has long been the target of student pranks.

Bob Heffernan began convulsing and hallucinating after drinking from a coffee mug on his desk during a class at Troy Athens High School in suburban Detroit last Friday.

The 46-year-old teacher, who said he never has taken drugs, thought he was having a heart attack. Another teacher helped Heffernan to a hospital where he was treated and released that evening.

Heffernan, who has taught English for 20 years, was described by colleagues as a sensitive, soft-spoken man often taunted by students. “He is literally a persecuted man,” said one teacher, who said students regularly steal tests and graded homework from Heffernan’s desk and that several students ambushed him in 1976 and cut off one side of the handlebar mustache he had grown for the nation’s bicentennial.