Screen shot from video of young female protesters screaming after being pepper sprayed
The screams pierced the air of a scene already filled with chaos and
disorder fomented by squads of men in blue. The female protesters
shrieking were on a street near Union Square in New York City and were
part of Occupy Wall Street, which had just taken over Zuccotti Park one
week ago. They were penned inside orange mesh netting the New York
Police Department had used to corral and control protesters. One of the
young women sprayed dropped to her knees and threw her hands up into the
air and continued to scream in pain. The young women had been pepper
sprayed by a white-shirted NYPD officer, who they would later find out
was named Anthony Bologna.
Chelsea Elliott, twenty-five year-old with long hair who was wearing a
crop tank top, was one of the protesters pepper-sprayed. She
told the
Village Voice
after the incident she “heard screams” near her. Officers had shoved a
young girl to the ground. She had been yelling at them as they beat
another person, and they put their hands on her and pushed her down onto
the pavement. Elliott shouted, “Stop! Why are you doing this?” Bologna
then walked up and sprayed the women.
“Not even one steady stream, more like you were spraying a plant — me
and three or four other girls,” Elliott recounted. “I fell to the
ground, and the girl behind me, this pretty, thin girl, a total hippie,
with short hair and a gray tank top, they got her so bad! We were just
lying on the ground, it was extremely painful.”
Elliott could not see for “fifteen minutes.” She could not breathe at
first and was sobbing. It felt “like the worst sunburn of my life.” It
was like “pouring a bottle of Tabasco all over your eyes and face.”
Occupy medics poured milk into her eyes “for like 10 minutes, and apple
cider vinegar” on her face.
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