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UPDATED: Pepper spray attack ‘hate motivated’

The mom of one of the teens pepper sprayed in Willowbrook on Monday afternoon is speaking out.
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Firefighters and ambulance paramedics helped two young people pepper sprayed Monday afternoon.

The mom of a teen drenched in pepper spray in the Willowbrook area Monday afternoon says it was a racially motivated attack.

A teenaged boy and girl – who the mom said are both half black – were pepper sprayed after getting into an argument with a stranger.

At about 3:30 p.m., the teens got involved in a verbal dispute with an older man, said Sgt. Alexandra Mulvihill of the Langley RCMP.

The 15-year-old girl’s mom said the man started yelling at them, “calling them all kinds of things.”

“Then they walked up to the vehicle and they got into an argument with him and he proceeded to pull out his pepper spray and spray them down.”

She said her daughter and her friend were “drenched head to toe.”

The argument took place in the 19600 block of Willowbrook Drive near the Go Bananas building.

The teens did not know the other man, said Mulvihill.

The man drove away. No one managed to see the car’s license number, and searches of the area did not locate the suspect.

“He was calling them n*****s. It was 100 per cent hate motivated,” the mom said. “He started calling them racial names, knowing, darn well, he had right next to him, his mace that he was prepared to use. That is an assault on the children and that was his intention.”

The girl suffered greatly from the attack, according to her mom.

“She was crying and screaming for three hours straight,” the mom said.

About four hours after being treated at home, the girl was taken to the hospital, where a litre of saline was administered into each eye to wash them out.