Chemical Agent Assault Leads To Arrest In Lafayette Friday

One person was reportedly arrested after a chemical agent intended to stave off grizzly bears was allegedly used during an assault in the 900 block of Village Center in Lafayette on Friday.

Details remain sparse as no one in an official capacity has addressed the incident, reported at 10:23am inside a business in the area, but neighbors report that a chemical agent alternately described as Bear Mace or Bear Spray was used and brought local police on the run.

“I heard it was bear spray but didn’t see the spraying part,” said one local who asked their name not be used. “We were only aware something was wrong when the police and fire trucks arrived.”

The identity of the person reportedly arrested after the assault was not given, nor was what – if any – motive was behind the assault revealed. The incident did come on a day when thieves were reportedly at work in Lamorinda and using diversionary tactics to cover their work. It was not known if the Lafayette incident was a diversionary tactic or intended assault.

Bear spray, which is similar to pepper spray only more potent, has seen use both right-wing and left-wing protesters against one another and police in the Pacific Northwest and, most visibly, during the apparently non-existent assault on the nation’s capitol on Jan. 6 – where at least three people were accused of dousing police officers with bear repellent..

The chemical, dispensed from a pressurized canister, has also been used in a series of local robberies where thieves used the agent to keep store employees and customers at bay.

“This is not your average can of pepper spray,” Dr. Rohini Haar, an emergency room physician in Oakland and a medical advisor for the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, told NBC news recently. “It’s being used as a weapon and we need to treat it as such.”