Board concludes Allston karaoke place didn't overserve woman who suddenly collapsed; asks if she might have been drugged

Shortly before 11:30 p.m. on March 18, a patron at Stage Karaoke on Brighton Avenue in Allston suddenly slumped to the floor, unable even to speak.

Police who arrived along with EMTs issued a citation for overserving a patron, but the Boston Licensing Board officially determined today that she was not overserved liquor - she hadn't even finished the one cocktail she had ordered.

"It was actually a possible drugging," board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce said.

In recent months, the board has held a number of hearings on people collapsing or suffering other symptoms of possible drugs put in their drinks at Boston bars.

But who or how she might have been drugged remains a mystery.

At a hearing on Tuesday, Stage owner Henry Wong said he had scrutinzed video of the short time the woman in her late 20s spent in the place and was unable to spot anything that looked like somebody putting anything into her drink.

Wong's attorney, Dennis Quilty, said the woman entered Stage with some friends and appear "perfectly normal." And then she collapsed to the ground. Stage employees managed to get the woman to a quiet place until an ambulance could arrive and take her to nearby St. Elizabeth for treatment, Quilty and a bar employee said.

"It seems to be another situation where somebody ingested something," Quilty said, pointing to a front-page article just that day about the issue in the Globe.