SAN DIEGO
Dinner turned into a scary experience for diners at a Mission Valley Denny?s Saturday night. The restaurant had to be evacuated after diners started coughing and complaining of irritated throats.
It all started when 8 year old Jennifer Vazquez and her Mom went to use the restroom. ?We smelled it and we ran out the door,? Jennifer said. Jennifer said she and her Mom started coughing from whatever was in the restroom. Then, they told the restaurant manager about it.
?We told the man from Denny?s and he said that, and he said let me go check what?s inside there and he went and he also started coughing.?
By that point, whatever was in the bathroom was getting into the restaurant. ?You inhaled something and it just kind of went down your throat, and everybody throughout the whole restaurant just started to cough,? said Donna Ortendahl, visiting from Minnesota with her family.
She said she got up to go outside and saw something upsetting. ?There was actually a little kid there that was actually coughing so hard I thought he was going to throw up,? she said.
Meantime, back inside the unknown substance was spreading. ?The people behind us, in the booths that were behind us, they started to cough and then we started to cough and then people beyond us started to cough,? Ortendahl said.
At that point, Ortendahl said a waitress told her they were closing the restaurant, and everyone had to get out. The fire department arrived shortly afterward and decided to call in the Hazmat team. 10News video showed Hazmat team members wearing oxygen masks going inside to see what was in the restroom. It turned out, it wasn?t just an odor. There was something else in the restroom.
?They described a yellow spray pattern on the wall, something that looks like it got sprayed all over the wall and the toilet,? said San Diego Fire & Rescue Captain Chuck Adams.
The Hazmat team conducted tests, and determined that the substance was pepper spray. Teams then began decontaminating the restaurant, a process that took about two hours.
One customer complained of a headache, but other than that, it was just a lot of raspy, uncomfortable feelings in people?s throats. But everyone 10News spoke with said the symptoms started to fade once they got outside and into the fresh air.
Just who sprayed the pepper spray in the women?s restroom remains a mystery.
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