Wednesday, May 4, 2011

3 more teens in Mass. bullying case head to court

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (AP) -- Three more Massachusetts teenagers accused of driving a classmate to suicide with their bullying are expected to agree to deals in the case.

The deals for Ashley Longe, Flannery Mullins and Sharon Velazquez are expected to be finalized Thursday in Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court. Two other teens agreed to deals on Wednesday and sentenced to a year of probation.

Six teenagers in all were charged in connection with the January 2010 suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, a freshman at South Hadley High School.

Prosecutors say Phoebe's family agreed to the plea deals to end the stress of the drawn-out court proceedings and, more importantly, because they required the teens to admit that their threats, crude insults and slurs about Phoebe's Irish ethnicity were criminal acts.

A sixth teen still faces charges.

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