A La Jolla man who admitted sending a death threat to a Children’s Pool seal activist was given credit Monday, July 7 for 4 1/2 months already served in prison plus 180 days of house arrest.
Kent Douglas Trego, 54, was expected to be released Tuesday from the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) and will live with a friend in La Jolla. He will have a Global Position System monitor in place under terms of five years of supervised probation.
U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez ordered that Trego “not use any computer” unless it has some sort of software that can be monitored by the U.S. Probation Department. Trego’s attorney, Mark Adams, said Trego does not own a computer and would abide by probation conditions.
Benitez ordered that Trego stay away from Children’s Pool in La Jolla and forbade him to contact any volunteers with the Animal Protection and Rescue League (APRL), including the one who received a death threat from Trego that triggered the case against him.
Trego must undergo 52 weeks of anger management and mental health counseling. He is banned from drinking alcohol and can’t enter a bar for five years under the probation terms. Benitez warned him of the consequences of violating probation conditions.
“If it happens, I can put you in custody for five years,” Benitez said.
The judge added: “I’ve kept him in detention so he would know custody is no cake-walk.”
Trego was arrested March 7 and held in MCC without bail after emailed death threats came to a volunteer with APRL that was sent from computers at the Riford Library in La Jolla. The sender’s email address was [email protected], and the message suggested the volunteer could be killed by members of a motorcycle gang. The person making the threat called himself “Biker Bobbie.”
The threat was specific because it involved an incident at Children’s Pool on Sept. 22, 2007, in which an APRL volunteer exchanged words with Trego after she saw two scuba divers go into the water. Trego was with the scuba divers, and their presence sent 18 harbor seals to rush into the ocean.
The APRL volunteer videotaped part of the incident as well as the divers’ license plate number of their car. Both divers were later cited for misdemeanor violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The volunteer, who is not being identified at the request of the prosecutor and APRL, told the judge she was “extremely disturbed” to receive the death threat.
“I found it creepy that whoever sent the death threat knew where I lived,” said the volunteer. “I experienced a heightened awareness of motorcycles.”
She told the judge, “It’s illegal, unacceptable, and he should be punished.”
Trego pleaded guilty April 17 to threatening a federal witness. Two counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce were dismissed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitch Dembin urged that Trego be sentenced to 10 months in prison. The judge asked him if there was any evidence found that showed Trego intended to carry out a death threat. Dembin said Trego bought no weapons and said there was “no evidence he intended to carry out the threat.
“The threats are vicious. They impact people’s lives,” Dembin said.
Adams said “he has expressed remorse from the very beginning.”
Trego, dressed in a tan prison uniform, said, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done…I’m very, very sorry for sending out the emails.”
Bryan Pease, an attorney and chairman of the board of the APRL, told the judge that Trego was writing anti-seal letters to various newspapers for years and suggested he was responsible for earlier threats going back to 2004.
Benitez questioned Pease specifically and asked him if he had proof Trego had threatened others before. Pease said he did not have direct evidence of it, but said the language in the death threats was similar to language in earlier threats.
The sentence Trego received was what his attorney sought. Adams said Trego has “several different job prospects he has been working on” during his incarceration.