Two teens plead in Phoebe Prince bullying-suicide case
(CBS/WBZ/AP) BOSTON - Two of five teens expected to resolve charges against them in plea agreements with prosecutors in the bullying-suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince pleaded in a Massachusetts court Wednesday.
Sean Mulveyhill, 18, pleaded guilty to criminal harassment in Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court.
Kayla Narey, 18, pleaded to sufficient facts to the same charge, acknowledging the state could win conviction at trial.
Three other teens have reached deals in the case and are expected to plead
guilty to a single misdemeanor charge during court hearings Wednesday
and Thursday, the station reports.
But 19-year-old Austin Renaud's case is still slated to go to trial. Renaud, unlike the other teens, only has one charge against him. He is charged with statutory rape for allegedly having sexual contact with Prince. He has denied the allegations, reports CBS station WBZ.
Renaud's lawyer says he has not been offered a plea deal.
Mulveyhill and Narey were ordered to do 100 hours of community service to help at-risk children, complete their high school education and were barred from profiting from their involvement in the Phoebe Prince case.
Prince, who had moved from Ireland, hanged herself in January 2010 in her family's apartment in South Hadley, about 100 miles west of Boston.
Prosecutors said Flannery Mullins, Sharon Chanon Velazquez and Ashley Longe began harassing Prince at school and on Facebook because she had a brief relationship with Renaud, who had dated Mullins.
Authorities say that on the day of Prince's death, one of the defendants used an obscenity to list her name on a school library sign-in sheet, and others followed her home, taunting her as she cried.
If prosecutors were to offer Renaud a plea deal for the reduced charge of indecent assault and battery on a person over age 14, he still would still have to register as a sex offender, officials say.