Teenager Pleads Guilty to Damaging Former Boyfriend’s Family’s Car

A Royal High School senior accused of harassing a former boyfriend pleaded guilty Wednesday to damaging his family’s car and making an annoying telephone call to his home.

Carolyn E. Grill, 18, of Simi Valley, admitted to pestering the family of Richard Hart, an 18-year-old Moorpark High School senior who investigators said spurned her advances.

Grill was originally arrested in March on similar charges and released from jail without bail after spending one night in custody.

But almost immediately after her release, while awaiting trial on the original charges, Grill kept up her campaign of harassment, investigators said, which included throwing eggs at Hart’s car and using a key to carve an obscenity into his mother’s automobile.

After a monthlong investigation, Grill was arrested April 15 on felony charges of intimidating a witness.

But a judge earlier this week dismissed those charges and said the alleged crimes merited only misdemeanor charges of vandalism. Prosecutors agreed to drop two vandalism counts when Grill pleaded guilty to one charge and to making an annoying telephone call.

After her guilty plea, Grill remained in jail in lieu of $25,000 bail and faces as much as a year in jail when she is sentenced Wednesday. Municipal Judge Herbert Curtis III declined to lower her bail.

Grill appeared in court Wednesday with her shoulder-length hair wrapped into twin pony tails and hid her face from television cameras with a Manila envelope during the short hearing.

She was charged March 13 with misdemeanor counts of making annoying telephone calls and vandalism after the Hart family complained of receiving crank telephone calls at their Moorpark home and magazines and pizzas they had not ordered.

The next day, investigators allege, Grill and several friends damaged the two Hart cars.

Her attorney, Neil Quinn, said that though Grill understands what she did wrong, her actions were merely childish pranks “that kids do.”

But prosecutors portrayed Grill as an obsessed teenager with a “fatal attraction” toward Hart. After Hart broke off their relationship after a few dates, investigators said, Grill began calling the Hart home several times a day. She is also accused of calling Hart at his job in a pizza parlor several times a day while sending plumbers and pizzas to the Hart home.

But Grill’s mother, in an earlier interview, said it was Hart who constantly called the Grills’ home. She blamed the vandalism on other students.