Police: Mom who egged on teen fight in Normandy charged

Instead of calling the school or local police for help, police say the mother took a step that landed her and another relative a court date next month.

Police say Vernita Bruce, 43, picked up her daughter after school one day last month and went on a mission. With advice from a friend, Bruce drove her teen daughter up and down Natural Bridge Avenue, along the route the girls who wanted to fight would be using on their walk home.

When she spotted the trio of would-be troublemakers, Bruce made a U-turn in traffic on Natural Bridge and pulled up alongside the busy stretch to confront the girls, police say.

"Then, mom tells her daughter to get out of the car and fight the girls," said Frank Mininni, the police chief of Normandy.

Mininni watched the whole thing unfold from his office window overlooking Natural Bridge Road that afternoon on Nov. 1. At first, the chief thought the car had turned around to give someone a ride. Then, he saw the fight.

"Fists started to fly," he said. "As soon as we saw the fists going, me and one of my detectives run across the street to break it up."

No weapons were used, and no one was seriously hurt. The girls involved suffered minor bumps and bruises, the chief said.

Mininni said Bruce and an older daughter, LaToya Christian, 25, ordered the fight. Both women were arrested for endangering the welfare of a child.

"It's really stupid," the chief said. "You've got to wonder what kind of home life she was exposed to."

Neither woman could be reached for comment on this story. They live in the 8900 block of Spur Lane in St. Louis County.

Bruce and Christian were booked, and police took their mugshots. The violation is an ordinance violation, Mininni said. The women were released from jail and will appear in court on Jan. 2. If convicted, the women could get up to a year in jail.

Had the teenager or her mom told someone at school, or called police, Mininni said Normandy police would have sent an officer to the school to intervene between the two groups.

"Since the mother did not notify the police and decided to have her own sort of street justice, people were injured and lessons in how not to handle conflict were passed on to these juveniles," the chief added.

Mininni said his hope is that the kids involved don't learn from the mother's action and "realize that there are better ways to handle problems at school."

Mininni said his department is trying to take proactive measures to cut down on teen troubles like what he saw on Natural Bridge. Last week, one of the Mininni's officers was in Phoenix undergoing gang-resistance training. The officer will work toward preventing gangs in Normandy schools. The program has a family-training component as well, Mininni said.

One of the purposes of the program, known as GREAT for gang resistance education and training, is to show police as positive role models while the kids are still young and impressionable, Mininni said.

This fight on Natural Bridge wasn't gang-related, Mininni said, but Normandy police have seen some at the middle and high schools that were.

The police agency tried last year to set up a juvenile police academy to give kids a look at the job officers do. The program didn't take off last year, perhaps because of the fee involved, but Mininni said he hopes to try to hold the academy this year for free. 

"The role of a police officer has evolved over the past several years and now we need to involve the youth just as we do the adults," Mininni said.