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Pepper Spray Incident an Accident

Feb 2, 2017 | 10:22 AM

It turns out the pepper spray incident that shut down Vernon’s Upper Room Mission over the noon hour Wednesday was an accident.
There was no altercation or anything else….so the police have been called off the investigation according to Lisa Anderson from the Mission.
“It just fell out of somebody’s pocket and discharged and so that was that.  He will have a talking to about making sure that the safety cap is on his pepper spray in future.”
Anderson says video surveillance confirmed the accident….but now things are back to normal.
“Things are back to normal.  Our dining room and kitchen are all cleaned up and we were able to serve breakfast this morning, so it’s back to business today.”
Anderson adds it was a badly timed incident considering the very cold snap of weather we are experiencing right now.
“There’s more people coming in out of the cold to use our services so for us to have to close down yesterday afternoon to clean up it was challenging for a lot of people.”
Anderson says roughly 120 plus people were affected who didn’t get any supper last night due to the Mission’s closure.