Cottonwood resident Randy Scott Young, 44, was sentenced on July 24 by Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Krista M. Carman to 50 years in prison for six counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in 2012.
Young also pleaded guilty on Aug. 28 to fraudulent schemes and artifices and theft charges arising from crimes he committed against a bicycle shop in 2018 and failure to appear charges after fleeing from a scheduled trial on the sex crimes charges.
On Jan. 28, 2012, Randy Scott Young was found with a minor female student in a vehicle on Rocking Chair Road.
The 17-year-old girl provided identification but Young did not, and instead provided a false name. A second officer who arrived identified Young and he was arrested.
Young was a teacher and coached girls’ sports at American Heritage Academy in Cottonwood.
The following day school staff found Young’s laptop in his classroom and searched it for lesson plans. During the search, staff found numerous photographs of child pornography.
The school turned the laptop over to the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, which conducted an investigation. Detectives reviewed the computer’s contents and found 11 images depicting children under the age of 15 in various sexual situations.
Detectives obtained a search warrant for Young’s Cottonwood home that night and he was arrested on a $60,000 bond. Young reportedly admitted to knowledge of the images on his computer, but did not believe they portrayed underage children.
Young was terminated by American Heritage Academy.
The computer and the images were ultimately excluded because the judge ruled investigators did not have a warrant for Young’s personal property. The charges were dismissed without prejudice on Aug. 13, 2012.
Investigators refiled the charges in 2018. A jury trial was scheduled but Young failed to appear at the trial and fled to Ireland.
A local bicycle shop at which Young had worked reportedly discovered that Young had embezzled more than $20,000 from the business and stole two bicycles valued at over $20,000.
Young was ultimately arrested in Ireland and brought back to Yavapai County, where he was tried in June 2023 and convicted of all counts in the sexual exploitation of a minor case. Young pled guilty on Aug. 28 to the charges related to the bicycle shop and failure to appear.
