Mother arrested after jumping into fight involving her daughter in Brooklyn

Thursday, March 15, 2018
Mother arrested after jumping into fight involving her daughter in Brooklyn
Rob Nelson reports on the arrest of a woman who jumped into a fight involving her daughter in Brooklyn.

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN (WABC) -- A woman was arrested after jumping into a fight involving her daughter in Brooklyn, but some say an online threat from another girl's father should have gotten him busted too.

After the high school massacre in Florida last month and the national student walkout protest on Wednesday, it will quickly become clear why this story is about so much more than just a schoolyard fight.

In cell phone video from February 15, two girls can be seen fighting outside Roy Mann Junior High School in Brookyn.

And at one point the mother of one of the girls not only eggs her daughter on, but also jumps into the melee herself, pulling on the braids of her 13-year-old daughter's adversary.

That mother, 38-year-old Tameeka Douglas-Stanbury, has been arrested and was arraigned Monday on assault charges and released.

The bad blood stemmed from another fight among the same girls back in January. During that tension, the father of one of the girls involved is taped on social media, angrily threatening violence against other students.

Renee Tenpow is the mother of the girl whose hair was being pulled by Douglas-Stanbury in the video. She spoke out Thursday, saying neither the school system nor the NYPD has taken the social media threat seriously enough, even though she showed the father's video to school authorities just a few days after she first saw it.

"The school has not made this threat aware to any of the parents," she said.

In this age of school shootings, Tenpow says the threat warrants urgency.

"If you are as a grown man, want to make a threat like that to children, you scare me as a human being because the threat did not go to adults that can handle themself, it went to innocent children," said Tenpow.

The school system says it addressed the fight immediately, reported it to police and disciplined the students involved.

They did not have a clear answer earlier Thursday when we asked them about the social media threat.

That video was turned over to police but no charges have been filed.

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