Cicero, Illinois \u2013 The morning began like any ordinary day. Rafael Veraza, 33, was on his way with his wife and their one-year-old daughter to Sam\u2019s Club, a wholesale store west of Chicago\u2019s city limits. A few minutes later, pepper spray filled the air (see video), people were screaming on the asphalt, and an asthmatic man was gasping for air with a burning chest while his child struggled to breathe in the back seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe started spraying from the front of the car toward the back,\u201d Veraza said. \u201cI got hit straight in the face.\u201d The cellphone video he later showed is shaky, but the panic is unmistakable. \u201cI\u2019m asthmatic. In that moment, I couldn\u2019t breathe,\u201d he said. His daughter Arianna, barely a year old, also inhaled the gas. Both were briefly hospitalized. \u201cMy daughter was trying to open her eyes,\u201d Veraza said. \u201cShe was struggling to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. Border Patrol does not confirm the incident \u2013 on the contrary: the Department of Homeland Security released a statement denying everything. \u201cNo,\u201d wrote Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the department, \u201cno pepper spray or crowd control agents were deployed in a Sam\u2019s Club parking lot.\u201d Yet, in the same statement, she listed that in Chicago over the weekend, law enforcement officers had been shot at, hit with bricks, rammed by vehicles, and attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to DHS, Border Patrol agents had entered the Little Village neighborhood to \u201ccontrol a crowd.\u201d What that looks like, we know \u2013 and we\u2019ve seen it often enough live. There, according to the department\u2019s account, shots were fired from a black Jeep Wrangler directly at the agents. Shortly after, they retreated in a convoy, pursued by angry residents. In the Sam\u2019s Club parking lot in Cicero, a car allegedly rammed a patrol vehicle, and then the agents withdrew again. \u201cAfter leaving the parking lot, the convoy was attacked once more,\u201d the statement read. A window was broken, and photos of the damage were released by the department. See also our article at: https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/ein-morgen-in-little-village-schuesse-pfefferspray-und-ein-kind-in-der-brutalitaet-der-operation-midway-blitz\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n