The threat of K-9 assistance sped up a drug investigation Tuesday morning in Old Town.

Old Town police Officer Bob Pelletier said he stopped Old Town High School student Christopher Spencer, 19, on the street about 8:30 a.m. after dispatch told him Spencer might be in possession of marijuana.

A search revealed nothing, Pelletier said, so he took Spencer back to school, where the report originated.

School officials told Pelletier that Spencer allegedly threatened another student Monday while trying to sell marijuana to him, Pelletier said. The student evidently told the principal.

Assistant Principal Jon Perry spoke to Spencer on Tuesday morning and patted him down, Pelletier said, finding what he suspected was a bag of marijuana in a pocket.

Spencer then pulled away and walked off school property with the suspicious material still in his pocket. Pelletier found him shortly thereafter.

Believing Spencer had dropped the bag in the area, Pelletier called Bangor and Maine State Police to request a K-9 unit.

Pelletier said that while waiting for the unit Spencer confessed and showed him where he hid the drugs.

Spencer was expelled from school and summoned for possession of a usable amount of marijuana.

Plainclothes drug enforcement officers handcuffed four people at the parking lot of Miller’s Restaurant in Bangor on Tuesday evening.

Three men and one woman were handcuffed and searched. Officers from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency found large stacks of cash on some of them.

There were at least six officers at the scene. They looked no different from passers-by.

The officers took the restrained people to MDEA headquarters.

Somebody picked up a kayak left by the road in Hampden on Monday night.

About 8 p.m. Hampden police Sgt. Scott Webber received a complaint from a man training for the Souadabscook Stream race. The man said he left his kayak by Papermill Road, and someone driving by stole it.

Webber said the man called back later that night to say he found the boat undamaged in the ditch about a mile down the road. The kayak was valued at $1,000.

Video evidence led to a summons for a Bangor man Monday afternoon.

About 4:45 p.m. Bangor police Officer William Lawrence arrived at Wal-Mart and spoke with a security officer, who showed him videotape of former assistant manager Scott Kennedy taking money from a cash register.

The store officer told Lawrence he had been watching Kennedy and had documentation that he had taken more than $395 from the register during the past few months.

Lawrence said he went to Kennedy’s Fifth Street residence and summoned him for theft.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Isaac Kimball