An Australian gap year student accused of triggering an airport bomb scare with a "joke" text message was yesterday cleared of any crime, but left with a hefty legal bill.
Angela Sceats (19), Sydney, Australia, was found not guilty of communicating false communication with intent by a jury at Chelmsford Crown Court after a two-day trial. But a judge ruled that she should pay her own legal costs - estimated by judicial sources to be around £15,000. Ms Sceats spent 10 days in Holloway Prison, north London, after being remanded in custody by magistrates following her arrest in November.
"I just want to put this episode behind me," she said as she left court. "I've always maintained from the moment of my arrest that this incident was an unfortunate misunderstanding. I would never intentionally cause a security alert."
Jurors were told that Ms Sceats was working as a waitress in London during a break from travelling and was on her way to Stansted airport to catch a Ryanair flight to Dublin. She was running late and, while on the train from Liverpool Street Station, sent a text message to Angela Forster in Islington, north London, saying: "Call the police and say there is a bomb on board."
Miss Forster, who is also Australian, immediately rang 999 to report the text and police prevented three Dublin- bound flights from leaving Stansted and considered shutting down the airport. Ms Sceats was arrested when she arrived at Stansted.
Prosecutors alleged that she was attempting to delay the flight by sending the message and intended Ms Forster to believe it. But Ms Sceats told the court that the message had been a "stupid joke". She said she and Ms Forster were enjoying a jokey text conversation as she travelled on the train and the "bomb" message was part of that.
"I was sitting on trains for so long and I was so bored and I was just wasting time sending stupid joke messages to her," Ms Sceats told the court.
"She was sending me joke texts. This text was sent to her as a joke in order to make her laugh. I never thought she would take it seriously.
"It was an extremely bad joke made in bad taste, but it was never supposed to go farther than us two. I never even knew that she took the text seriously until I got to the airport and I was on the phone to her and even then I didn't really believe that she had called the police."
The judge, Recorder Rex Bryan, told the court after the jury had delivered the verdict: "Had she been convicted she would have gone straight to prison. This sort of offence is strongly disapproved of by the public."
- (PA)