McDonald's Perp Was Busted There Before

APRIL 25--The Baltimore teenager charged last week with the brutal beating of a McDonald’s patron was arrested last year for assaulting a woman following a dispute in the same restaurant, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Teonna Monae Brown, 18, was charged with two assault counts for allegedly attacking Danielle Dower, 38, last July. In October, a Baltimore County judge ruled that charges would not be further pursued against Brown, according to court records, which do not further explain that “nolle prosequi” decision.

[Update: Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger told TSG that the criminal counts against Brown were dropped at the victim’s request.]

In a handwritten police statement, Dower said that she had left the McDonald’s with her two daughters when Brown confronted her, asking “Did you call me ugly?” Though Dower said she had not, Brown “kept trying to badger us.” At one point, Dower said, the teenager “pushed me in the back.” After Dower pushed back, Brown “took her fist and threw a punch to my face.”

As the pair scuffled, Dower said, Brown hit her in the back with an umbrella and “pulled my wig off my head.”

Saying that, “I wanted to get my kids to safety,” Dower went with her children to a nearby shopping center. Brown and her friends, Dower added, followed behind.

As Dower called 911, two females grabbed her daughter by the hair and dragged the teenage girl across the floor. “I had to stop talking to the operator, get on top of my daughter and protect her while trying to fight off those girls,” Dower stated.

The fight, she added, left her with “a few cuts to my face” and “my head was hurt from the hair pulling and my leg got hurt. My oldest daughter head was hurting from the girls dragging her across the floor. She suffered cuts to her knee and one to her face, bumps to her forhead and behind her ear.”

Brown and a female cohort were identified by a cop “from prior contacts from prior incidents,” according to a Baltimore County Police Department report. The pair--and a third suspect, a juvenile--initially denied “any involvement in an assault until after they were identified by the victim.” An arrest report described Brown as a high school student at The Arrow Project of Maryland, and listed her sole tattoo as “chocolate covered cherries.”

Brown was hit with a pair of misdemeanor assault charges, according to a July 28 statement of charges filed in District Court. However, an October 21 filing shows that Judge Norman R. Stone issued a “nolle prosequi” finding with regard to the two counts (each of which carried a maximum prison term of 10 years). (7 pages)