Student Said He Sold LSD at Rave to 5 Who Died, Prosecutor Says : Court: USC senior was arrested Thursday after undercover DEA probe, but has not been charged in the teenagers’ deaths.

In a telephone conversation secretly recorded by drug agents, a USC senior boasted of selling LSD-laced snow cones to five teenagers who died in a car crash after an all-night rave concert, a federal prosecutor said at a court hearing Friday.

“I was selling the snow cones they ate, and right after they ate my snow cones, they plunged to their deaths,” Hugh “Scottie” McLetchie was quoted as saying.

“Oh yeah, beautiful. It was beautiful. The drugs I sold them did it to them.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Chris Johnson cited the quote at a bail hearing for the 21-year-old drama student, who was arrested Thursday night on a charge of selling 11,200 doses of LSD to undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

Although McLetchie has not been charged in the five deaths, an arrest complaint said he confessed to selling LSD from a friend’s snow cone concession at the outdoor concert attended by the teenagers last weekend in Angeles National Forest.

It was not clear from Friday’s court proceedings how McLetchie knew he had sold LSD to the five youths, given the presence of more than 5,000 people at the event.

Asked if his remark might have been an idle boast, U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Mayorkas would say only, “The evidence in the complaint and in court today speaks for itself.”

McLetchie’s federal public defender, Pedro Castillo, argued unsuccessfully before Magistrate Jeffrey W. Johnson that the comment could have been taken out of context because the drug agents recorded only one end of the telephone conversation.

DEA Agent Beth Bianchi testified that she sat three feet from McLetchie in his Pasadena apartment Monday evening when he bragged about selling LSD to the five teenagers during a telephone conversation with an undisclosed acquaintance.

Bianchi’s partner, Graham Lockhart, was wearing a concealed recording device that picked up McLetchie’s end of the conversation.

Toxicological studies of the five San Bernardino-area teenagers are underway, the prosecutor said. If McLetchie is found to have sold them LSD, it could affect his sentence if he is convicted.

Under federal law, a drug dealer faces a mandatory sentence of 20 years to life if a sale results in a death. The penalty is doubled if the purchaser is a minor.

McLetchie was described by his lawyer as “pretty scared and pretty frightened about what is going to happen to him.”

According to an arrest complaint, he had been under investigation since February, when the DEA launched a probe into LSD sales by USC students. It could not be learned whether other USC students have been arrested or remain under investigation.

The agents said they made their first purchase of LSD from McLetchie on Feb. 22, followed by others on July 19 and Thursday when he was arrested.

McLetchie was ordered held without bail. Johnson said the case would be presented to a federal grand jury for an indictment.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials braced for the possibility that rave enthusiasts would show up at a commercial water park in the Mojave Desert today, where promoters were planning an overnight “outdoor electronic music festival.”

A permit to stage the event, however, was rejected this week by San Bernardino County supervisors, who said they sympathized with nearby residents’ concerns about noise and trash. They also voiced anxiety about sanctioning an event similar to the one last weekend, when the five San Bernardino-area teenagers were killed in a crash while driving home.

And in Pomona, city officials moved to crack down on the all-night raves at the downtown Fox Theater, where two teenagers died in the last eight months. City officials are drafting a law seeking to set strict guidelines covering such things as time of operation and noise levels of venues.

*

Times staff writer Tom Gorman and correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this story.