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Subscribe to RSSWALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Holiday shoppers pepper sprayed by a purse thief managed to subdue the parolee running from a Walnut Creek department store with $10,000 worth of handbags.
Walnut Creek police said Bryan Black, 42, and a female accomplice snatched 17 high-end purses at a Nordstrom store Saturday night and ran for a getaway car.
Lt. Steve Gorski said the woman escaped with a couple of purses. But Black, an Oakland parolee armed with a knife, was grabbed by a shopper and tackled by another. Black showered the shoppers with pepper spray, but they managed to hang on until police arrived, investigators said.
Black was booked for investigation of robbery, burglary, assault and possession of stolen property.
The incident happened 10 days after a woman spewed pepper spray on a crowd of Black Friday shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in the San Fernando Valley.
The Associated Press contributed to this report by NBC station KSBW of Santa Barabara, Calif.
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Pepper spray doesn't spray people, people spray people with pepper spray.
Idiot doesnt he realize that cali shoppers, deal with pepper spray all the time? They are probably immune to the stuff now..
It's like pepper spray is becoming the 6 gun of the west. What's next, pepper spray duels at 50 paces.
What bags did they grab? Inquiring minds want to know!
The thieves should have been given the purses before there was a need to use force. Those purses were a means by which the 1% leverage their control over the 99%, and must thus be reclaimed, at all cost, lest the wealth gap widen yet more.
It's unfortunate that we live in a country where people don't understand the need, and the justice behind free high-end accessories.
I commend these modern day Robinhoods for using non-lethal methods of protest, but I'd expect it to get far worse.
OCCUPY Nordstrom!
Is that supposed to be a sarcastic dig at OWS protests? It was pretty lame and childish, not to mention uninformed.
These people are thieves not protesters. They have no care about anything and just wanted to make money the old fashioned way, by taking it from others. Actually they have more in common with Wall Street than the protesters it seems.
...and if every mall shopper was armed with pepper spray there wouild be a lot less of these attacks...you betcha
I hope they whooped him good until the police got there. I also can't wait until they get the female accomplice that so-called got away with a few bags. She deserves hers as well.
radagast, give it a rest. Esperanza was obviously being funny. If the OWS people put as much effort into finding jobs as they do with the protest, they could all be working and they would have no reason to protest.
If pepper spray is criminalized, then only criminals will have pep...er, nevermind
That cop who spayed those really set a good example,is he still on the force ? I hope not! He needs to be arrested and locked up!
tomorrow, he was talking about UC Davis
Are you for real tomorrow? DS saying that the cop didn't set a good example for others?
It's this concept that we (or most people) understand....it's called a correlation.
BTW tomorrow - DS now has 4 votes
The cops are spaying people now? Glad I'm a guy.
tomorrow, you are the one that is the literary incompetent. I clearly stated that DS was talking about the UC Davis campus cop that assaulted protestors recently. Try and keep up lest you drag everyone down.
S/He was making a connotation to the fact that maybe the shopper saw the cop doing it on the news and though "Hey, if the cops can do it so can I!"
Fixed that for you :P
@Tomorrowsnews...
Are you always this unnecessarily caustic and judgmental? And, wrong?
Yes "the article clearly states...that Black showered the shoppers with pepper spray".
What you seem entirely unable to grasp is that ds mears comment (and the comments that followed) were referring to the "example" set by a campus police officer who pepper sprayed numerous students just two weeks ago at UC Davis...a school only forty five minutes removed from where this incident occurred.
It's one thing to disagree with ds mears assertion. It's quite another to repeatedly miss the point and angrily lash out at others for YOUR error.
I'm curious...does all of that mean spirited name calling, self-righteous condescension and pompous bloviation make you feel smarter...or better than other people? That's just sad.
@tomorrowsnews...
LOL...Wow...that's quite a mouthful! If only reporting your comments as delusional, deranged, histrionic and/or laughably hypocritical were options...unfortunately that's not the case. So I had to go with inflammatory.
If you feel my my initial post or the above comments are inflammatory, you should re-read them. I assailed your comments and questioned the motives behind your behavior and attitude....whereas you simply resort to direct personal attacks on people.
If you're genuinely new to the Vine as your profile suggests, I strongly suggest you take a moment and read through the CoH...or you won't be here for very long. My guess is you're just another re-reg.
In either case, I won't be baited into flame war by someone incapable of "detecting" an obvious reference to a recent event which occurred in close physical proximity...who then turns around and lashes out with a dozen or more paragraphs filled with angry nonsensical speculation, outlandish pejorative conjecture and blatant personal attacks... when he finally discovers his own error.
Other than that...all I will say, is Merry Christmas tomorrowsnews!
tomorrow,
the world does not revolve around this article. Your methodology of thinking that only the here and now matters is part of the reason our country is going down the crapper. You would make a horrible journalist (talking about REAL journalism here, not this MSNBC they said/Fox opinionated style reporting).
Plus that idea that nothing matters but what is in front of you is a completely closed minded and unintellectual habit.
Plus this is a news forum where we talk about, oh I don't know; maybe the news? Since the UC Davis thing was BIG time news and happened in the same state as this incident it at least has several points of commonality; thus able to be branched successfully.
However if you really are new here, derailing is fairly common so get use to it, but as I mention below, I think you may possibly be a re-reg.
@Wide
You know I would almost bet he is as well. No one is as dense as this guy claims to be.
Thats amazing that shoppers would do that, especially after being showered with pepper spray. You have my respect..
The cop didn't spray the shoppers; the thief did. Read it again!
Dee I am pretty sure that was directed at the cops who sprayed the protesters.
They should have taken his own spray and hosed him before the cops got there.
Yes, my thougts exactly
I wonder if he kept one purse for himself. He'll need one to carry his balls around in when his "celly" finds out that he is in there for stealing womens purses.
The perp was Black!
Bryan Black specifically.
Next will be SMOKE, TEAR GAS or other GAS CANISTERS thrown in aisles to throw off SECURITY! So they can rob stores without being seen!!
ONLY IN THE U.S. OF A. It reminds me of an article about steeling the red kettle full of money from Salvation Army. This Country is CROOK ED.
Pepper spray is considered a condiment in California. We put that sh&t on everything.
"Now I don't care who you are, that's funny." Larry the Cable Guy
used to be they sprayed you with the new fragrance "Who's Cooking Cabbage?"
now it's pepper spray.
I think it's an improvement.
You knew it was only a matter of time before the thugs would start carrying pepper spray. WTF????
Sorry, but I refuse to believe that 17 purses are WORTH $10,000. That may be what some morons would pay for them, but there's no way that two humans could possibly run out of a store carrying $10,000 worth of purses. Yes, yes. I know everything is worth what people will pay for it. But, if there are 17 people in this country who would pay $588 for a purse, I tend to believe that we have lost our way.
I'm with you on this, these robbers were stealing from thieves.
There are thousands of people. You have to be in the right circles. Hermes purses go for four figures each.
@tomorrowsnews: You do reveal your ignorance and ability to inform people of your inability (whatever the f*** that meant) to understand irony, don't you? I KNOW, idiot, that people DO pay well over $800 for purses all the time. In fact, I was once suckered into paying some ridiculous amount of money (I think about $250) for a Coach purse for my ex-wife when we were still married. The point, my completely brainless friend, is that people who pay that sort of money for a purse are - as I was - suckers.
@Illionois man: The "right" circles? I'd call those a circle full of suckers the wrong circles.
Were these purses even made out of leather? At the outside, I might be persuaded that a GOOD, solid leather purse of exceedingly rugged construction (think saddle bags) could possibly be worth around $500. But not some silly little handbag made out of cloth or naugahyde.
@tomorrowsmoron: First, sucker, I AM married. REmarried. Happily. To a woman who would no more have me spend $800 on a purse than to jump off a bridge. Because she's no sucker. But, she'd be the first to call you one if you spent $800 on a purse. Because she doesn't waste her tiime or money trying to impress people like you.
Second, sucker, I bought the Coach bag in a very legitimate store. A little chain we call Belk's - guaranteed to be legitimate and not a knock-off. And, I STILL say I got suckered. Because paying $250 for a little purse that says "Coach" on it is ridiculous.
Third, what are you? Some kind of purse fairy? Why the hell would I have the slightest interest in wandering through the wholesale purse fair? The real bottom line has virtually nothing to do with the quality anyway because very few people stupid enough to spend $800 on a purse are going to actually use that purse for more than a year. So, it really doesn't matter if they use the finest materials on the planet, does it? It's a WASTE of money.
Finally, why don't you learn to speak/write proper English before bothering me with any more of your off-the-point ramblings?
Thank goodness they did not have Guns at least. I mean, it is LA after all. So, they will probably get lighter snetences. But that is fine by me. Pepper Spray usually doesn't kill. It just irritates.
And re-inforcing Miker's post, there is NO WAY that 17 purses are worth $10K. That is insane. But then again, it is LA. And those stupic and Vapid women on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or some of their counterparts are just dumb enough to spend that much on junk.
but you don't understand, they each came with a (wait for it.................) pepper spray holder. :)
@Starfox7000
FWIW...Walnut Creek, CA and Los Angeles, CA are several hundred miles apart... and a world away. They're roughly as far apart as Philadelphia, PA and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
They'll probably use the same excuse the other pepper sprayer used: that they were afraid for their lives and so that's why they pepper sprayed these nasty bad people who were trying to stop them from stealing these purses. The nerve of some people! Interrupting a perfectly good grab and run!
This is just one more good reason to boycott shopping at brick and morter stores altogether.
So where will you buy groceries? Where will you buy gasoline for your car? Where will you buy things that you need right now? Don't think Amazon is quite up to shipping you 20 gallons of gas for your vehicle.
As Bobby Hill so aptly put it: "Let go of my purse!"
merry xmas
It's just a food spice-ha-ha