Drinking on the return from a Tech field trip preceded fatal accident

A Texas Tech student charged with intoxication manslaughter tells police she got had gotten drunk during a Tech field trip prior to the fatal accident. Twenty-one-year-old Jeena Roberts is accused in the death of 54-year-old Linda Smaltz last Friday. Smaltz was in a Ford SUV which was hit from behind by a Chrysler driven by Roberts. KAMC-28 reports that Roberts told an officer she drank five beers and a shot of run on a bus returning from a field trip to New Mexico with her Tech engineering class. She said her professor had allowed the students to take alcohol on the bus to drink on the way home. The professor was not identified. The university has declined to comment on the situation, other than to say it was a tragic incident still being investigated by Lubbock police.