"I started screaming in pain," Laurel says. "He had held the canister so close to my face that my hair and face were dripping with pepper spray."
In the melee, she said she badly twisted her ankle. She was taken to a makeshift jail in Earlington Heights for processing and decontamination.
"Because I couldn't walk, they dragged me," she recalls. "They had a shower set up in the parking lot. Two officers held me up as I was drenched for a few seconds with water. I was then dragged into this tent. It was dark. There were four men in white biohazard suits. I'm still coughing and crying from the pepper spray. I can't really tell what is happening."
With her hands still bound behind her back, she said she felt her T-shirt coming apart. "That's when I realized they had scissors and they were cutting my clothes off of me," she says.
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Sgt. Pete Andreu, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, said he could neither confirm nor deny Laurel was pepper-sprayed by police. The ''chemical agent'' could have been released by one of the protesters, he said. He also doubted she ever asked for medical help. The decontamination, he added, was done by the Miami-Dade Fire Department.
In the melee, she said she badly twisted her ankle. She was taken to a makeshift jail in Earlington Heights for processing and decontamination.
"Because I couldn't walk, they dragged me," she recalls. "They had a shower set up in the parking lot. Two officers held me up as I was drenched for a few seconds with water. I was then dragged into this tent. It was dark. There were four men in white biohazard suits. I'm still coughing and crying from the pepper spray. I can't really tell what is happening."
With her hands still bound behind her back, she said she felt her T-shirt coming apart. "That's when I realized they had scissors and they were cutting my clothes off of me," she says.
�
Sgt. Pete Andreu, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, said he could neither confirm nor deny Laurel was pepper-sprayed by police. The ''chemical agent'' could have been released by one of the protesters, he said. He also doubted she ever asked for medical help. The decontamination, he added, was done by the Miami-Dade Fire Department.
