Source: Josh Dickey, ‘Man maced at movie theater for asking woman to turn off her phone’, Mashable, 10 November 2014, http://mashable.com/2014/11/10/man-maced-at-movie-theater-for-asking-someone-to-turn-off-their-cell-phone/
Text: A man who asked a woman to turn off her cell phone at a Monday night screening of Mr. Turner was maced in the face following an awkward confrontation, an eyewitness who was sitting nearby tells Mashable.
The American Film Institute screening of the biopic at the TCL Chinese theater in Hollywood had just gotten underway when a man near the back row asked a woman sitting in front of her to turn off her phone, whose screen was visibly glowing.
“He was saying ‘Excuse me sir, could you please turn off your screen'” over and over, the eyewitness tells Mashable (he had apparently mistaken the woman for a man). After repeating himself several times, and without a response, the man then tapped the woman on the shoulder.
The woman reacted angrily to being touched, and “flipped out” on him, the eyewitness said. “She stands up and starts cursing, saying ‘You hit me, you hit me, I’m going to call the police.” She then turned the phone’s flashlight function on and pointed it directly at the man’s face.
The awkward standoff lasted for nearly a minute, the witness said, and she continued shining the light even as people all around implored her to turn it off and sit down. As the man was calmly defending himself, she then told him she had mace and started digging in her bag.
Without hesitation, she took the cap off the bottle, pointed it directly in his face and sprayed him at point-blank range. The man and the woman sitting next to him sat for a moment in shock as she sat back down. As the couple left, the man slapped the woman on the arm and said something to her, the eyewitness said.
The movie was never stopped, and the woman continued to sit and watch for another 20 minutes or so before volunteers and security with flashlights came to escort the woman, who was not immediately identified, out of the theater. She did not put up a fight as she was leaving, the witness said.
The incident brings to mind a March incident in Florida in which a retired police officer shot and killed another man who had been texting during previews of Lone Survivor.
No one answered the phone Monday night at the TCL Chinese 6, a group of theaters adjacent to the iconic TCL Chinese that’s host to several high-profile Hollywood premieres.
Comments: TCL Chinese 6 is a group of cinema theatres next to the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles which was originally known as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
