Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003133400
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Mall manager Louise Dudley said Monday the mall closed to prevent injuries after pushing and shoving broke out when about 400 people gathered to watch a fight. She said most were teen-agers.
There were flare-ups in four areas within 100 yards of each other, she said. "Tempers started to flare. People were beginning to take sides."
It was the first time that many people had congregated in such an incident, Dudley said. "We've never had to close the mall before because of fighting," she said.
She said Lynchburg police and school officials heard rumors late last week there would be a weekend confrontation between youths at the mall, so she doubled her security force.
Lynchburg police said the mall's closing followed a fight among teens near the Mindboggle video arcade and the arrest across the mall of a 16-year-old Madison Heights youth on charges of assaulting a city policeman who was moonlighting there. Dudley said the incidents were not related.
Late last month, fights near the Mindboggle arcade at Roanoke's Valley View Mall, and gunshots in the parking lot, led to the arrests of two Roanoke teens, but the mall has been quiet since then, security chief Jerry Wody said Monday.
Mindboggle Inc., based in Charlotte, N.C., also operates arcades in Charlotte, Fayetteville, N.C., and Colonial Heights.
Lynchburg police officer Wayne Wood said Saturday night's fight near the Mindboggle at River Ridge involved a white teen-ager who said he was assaulted by black teens. There were no arrests.
Wood would not characterize the incident as racially motivated, however. "We've had plenty of blacks and whites fighting before" at the mall, he said.
Dudley said the mall has no evidence that the Saturday incidents stemmed from either racial problems or from reports of rival black and white gangs in Lynchburg.
She said there have been reports that some members of a white youth gang called the Hartt Foundation that frequents Lynchburg's Wards Road area had been barred from the mall. Dudley also has heard reports of a black gang called Park Avenue Posse.
She said no weapons were confiscated in the Saturday incidents.
The 16-year-old arrested across the mall near the Sears store and Morrison's cafeteria ran into and knocked down an off-duty officer as the youth was being chased through the mall by guards, said Wood, the Lynchburg police officer. Dudley said the teen, who also was charged with resisting arrest, was being pursued because he had cursed a mall guard.
The youth, also charged with resisting arrest, had been barred from the mall in December, according to Dudley. She said the mall is seeking warrants against him for trespassing and for cursing and abusing a security officer.
Mindboggle is not the only place in River Ridge Mall that has had troubles, Wood said. "I know we've had some knock-down, drag-outs and shoplifters out there."
Northern Virginia parents have complained that mall security guards are overstepping their authority in policing teen-agers.
"Minors were detained, photographed, and forced to sign documents under implied threats of arrest, and parents were not informed," said Gloria Miranda of Centreville.
She said Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax failed to notify her when it barred her 15-year-old daughter after a boy she knew spat over a railing and a girl in her group called security guards "pigs."
Valley View Mall keeps books of photographs and information on people barred from the mall or involved in serious offenses, security chief Wody said recently.
He said guards bar people for 30 days for minor incidents and sometimes refuse to let juveniles return unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
In the most serious cases, such as the two 16-year-olds charged in a Feb. 24 shooting in the mall parking lot, people are barred permanently. "They'll never see the inside of this mall again," Wody said.
The Associated Press contributed information to this story.
by CNB