Teen gets 3 years for making bomb threats to Vero Beach High in 2009

VERO BEACH, Fla. - Indian River Circuit Judge Robert Hawley decided Thursday that a teenager who pleaded no contest to charges that he called in multiple bomb threats to Vero Beach High School will serve three years as a youthful offender in a juvenile detention boot camp.

Authorities said Taren Stage, 18, made six false bomb threats that repeatedly forced the evacuation of the school from March 3 to April 21, 2009. All the calls were made anonymously. He was one of two people charged in the case.

Stage, who was 17 years old when the incidents happened, wanted Hawley to sentence him as a juvenile so he could stay in a prison for youthful offenders instead of going to an adult prison. The State Attorney’s Office asked the judge for a three-year sentence in a Department of Corrections facility.

Each charge of making a false bomb threat is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, according to the State Attorney’s Office.

In February, former Vero Beach High student Brittany Walker, 19, of Vero Beach, was sentenced for being an accomplice in one of the threats. Hawley ordered her to serve six months’ probation after he withheld finding her guilty on a lesser charge of disturbing a school function.

She was originally charged with making one false bomb threat.

Stage and Walker were arrested in April 2009 after sheriff’s investigators tracked a cell phone number used around the time of the last bomb threat on April 21. With help from a phone company, investigators used GPS coordinates to trace the phone to Stage’s home address near Vero Beach.

During that last call at 6:30 a.m., the caller said there was a bomb in the school and, “It will explode if you let any students in. Have a good day.” The caller then hung up, according to court files.

According to court records, Stage made the first phone call to get out of classes. Prosecutors contend he had a girlfriend in Indiana who made bomb threats without getting caught.

Prior to attending Vero Beach High, he was in the school district’s Alternative Center for Education because he was accused of pulling fire alarms at Sebastian River High School.

After he posted bail on the false bomb threat charges, he was arrested Dec. 19 on unrelated charges of battery and escape from the state’s Okeechobee Intensive Halfway House. Stage was accused of attacking a staff member and taking her keys in the Dec. 19 escape.

He was arrested in Indian River County and put back in state custody. Then, he was transferred to the secure juvenile facility in West Palm Beach.