Man Arrested at Theater After Pepper-Spraying Moviegoer on Phone

Nobody likes distractions in the movie theater. But one California man really doesn’t like them.

According to a report from CBS, a man was arrested at the AMC Burbank 16 on September 15 after he allgedly pepper-sprayed another patron who was using their cell phone roughly 30-40 minutes into a movie.

An eyewitness description of what occurred, from their report…

The man was scrolling on his phone with the brightness all the way down when [the attacker] walked up to him and asked him to turn off his phone. The man refused.

After the patron refused to turn off his phone, the attacker allegedly sprayed him.

The movie where the incident took place was the Andrew Garfield medieval drama The Uprising, a name that is almost too perfect given this situation.

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The attacker not only sprayed the man with the phone, according to CBS, he accidentally “caught two other people” in the process. All three were later taken to the hospital.

Obviously cell phone use in movie theaters is rampant, and sometimes very distracting. I’m not sure pepper spraying the person on their phone is necessarily the proper solution to that issue, though.

Admittedly, I was not in the room in Burbank. But I have to assume someone getting pepper-sprayed and then running out of the room screaming was much more distracting than the dude who was looking at his phone during the film — with the brightness turned all the way down, no less. (That’s at least according to the eyewitness report in that CBS article.)

A better solution might just be a little more empathy, both from someone using their phone and showing no concern for the moviegoing experiences of the patrons around them, and from those around them who are trying to to enjoy the movie without distraction. I recognize that is not a value appreciated by a lot of people these days. (I mean, obviously. A dude pepper-sprayed a stranger over using his phone during The Uprising.) But maybe we could try it, and see what happens.