DOVER-FOXCROFT – A Dover-Foxcroft teenager pleaded guilty Monday to three counts of burglary involving Foxcroft Academy and was sentenced in 13th District Court.

Ryan Porter, 18, one of two juveniles charged in three break-ins that occurred in 2003 at the independent academy, was sentenced to two years in the Department of Corrections with all but 30 days suspended on each count, to be served concurrently. He also was placed on probation for two years and was ordered to share in the restitution of $5,225.83.

The case against the second juvenile charged in connection with the break-ins is pending.

Porter, who was an FA student at the time, and a 16-year-old male juvenile allegedly broke into the academy in October and December 2003, where they took nitric acid from a chemistry laboratory, destroyed a cash register in the cafeteria, damaged two fire extinguishers, stole a set of acetylene torches and then tried to use the torches to burn down an office door in hopes of reaching a safe inside the main building.

The two juveniles allegedly abandoned the torches and tunneled their way to the safe. After moving a set of lockers from the wall, they used tools to pound their way through the brick and Sheetrock wall and then crawled through the hole and into the safe, according to police. About $1,000 was taken from the safe of which $500 was recovered after the break-in.

Judge Kevin Stitham made it known Monday that he is a trustee of the academy and offered to step down from the case, but neither the defense nor the prosecution objected to having him mete out the sentence.

Stitham told Porter that FA plays a valuable role in the community.

“In a very real sense it’s the center of a community,” he said.

The judge recalled that in 1960 when FA had been completed but the gymnasium had not, students were called to an assembly in Central Hall. Then Headmaster Tilson Thomas walked to a podium with a scowl on his face and reported that someone had smashed a pumpkin in the school’s parking lot. Thomas was outraged, students were outraged and the whole community was outraged, he said.

Stitham suggested that he could not imagine what those same students and community would think of Porter’s actions some 40 years later.

“It makes the quality of all of our lives a little bit less than it was before,” Stitham said, of the crime.