Mother Trains Up Her "Street Pirates" By Taking Them Along On A Bank Heist

Police: High school students skip school to rob bank with mom

Three DeKalb County teens got an unusual field trip Friday when they skipped school to accompany the mother of one of them on a bank heist.

Police in Lilburn said Tawander Simmons, 35, of Stone Mountain, pointed a handgun at a teller at the Wells Fargo Bank in the 5500 block of Lawrenceville Highway Friday morning. She was accompanied by two of the teens, while a third waited outside in the getaway car, said Deputy Chief of Police Bruce Hedley.

Hedley said early in the day that Simmons checked her son Benny Brice, 17, and the two other boys, out of Stephenson High School in Stone Mountain just before the robbery. Hedley said that account was based on what the arrested youths had told officers, but he said the school police later told him that only one of the teens had attended school Friday and then walked out but that the others had skipped.

School officials gave an account that differed slightly. A spokesman for the DeKalb County School System told the AJC that there was no record of any of the three teens attending school Friday morning.

"Nobody has a record of them showing up to class," said the schools spokesman, Walter Woods. He said there also was no record of Simmons checking them out.

The robbery occurred at around 9 a.m.

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