The above story caught my attention - see, I single-handed CAUGHT some dumb a-hole like the principle in the story above (Mr. Pacheco) whose mug shot says it all (his eyes are out of focus from pepper spray).

Little known fact of using pepper spray in close-combat scenarios - debilitating (crippling) blow-back is common. If you deploy pepper spray (like Bear Spray) in close proximity to yo' sef, guess what???

You're just as likely to dose yo' sef BUT GOOD! 

Years ago I was working at a local Walmart for sh*ts and giggles, coming off a lunchbreak, I see the assistant manager and the in-house loss-control supervisor lurking just outside the exit behind some pillars to ambush someone. I sidled over to the manager and whispered, "What's up?" He confided in me that a shoplifter was heading for the door and they aimed to nab him as soon as he actually left the store (which was the threshold for a legit shoplifting charge). 

I backed off to wait and watch. A big (6'3"/ 220) white dude wearing punk-rocker-style cycle-leathers came out and the two lurkers pounced. The shoplifter was hit high by both guys. I thought at least one of them would hit him low to throw him off balance but the morons had apparently never played football. 

They began dancing around in a circle, two smaller guys trying to pull down a resisting big dude from the top. Then the shoplifter pulls out pepper spray and hits both of the lurkers dancing with him in the face, but (naturally) he gets a massive dose in his own face. 

As soon as I saw that, realizing that the shoplifter had just committed a felony and I had a legit right to take him down with reasonable force and arrest him, I got a running start from about twenty feet away and hit him with all of my weight from his blind side as high as I could. He didn't go down but teetered off-balance. Seeing this, I backed off and quickly hit him again up high. This time he went over like a felled tree (the bigger they are...). He landed hard on the concrete and maybe got some of the wind knocked out of him. 

Meanwhile I can see my buddies in "management" trying futilely to clear their own vision.  I leveraged myself to stay on top of the now-prostrate, mostly-blind suspect, leaned forward and put my forearm across the suspect's throat. I told him to stop resisting because he was under arrest. He continued to struggle, so I put MORE pressure on his throat and watched his eyes widen as his airway was constricted. 

Then over my left shoulder, saw what was apparently his GF sobbing demands for me to, "let him GO!!!" and a stack of children's holiday CD's fall out if his pocket. He had apparently stolen some Christmas gifts for the woman's children. I thought that was fairly pathetic. 

I did not let him go, told his woman to back off, ordered him again to stop resisting, put more pressure on his throat which made him pensive. 

Then over my left shoulder (again) was not the sobbing GF this time, but the loss control supervisor who had slightly cleared his eyes (we called him Tennessee 'cause he was from there and had an accent). 

"Please! Let him go, Lunch!" he said behind watering eyes, coughing a little. 

Keeping the pressure on the big guy's airway, I looked over my shoulder at him like "really?" Then I saw customers standing around watching and realized the whole thing was becoming an embarrassment for him and the manager. 

So I let the big white dude up, watched his bitch and him sprint (as best they could, him being 90% blind) to their car which had two different license plates on the front/back. Bystanders took photos of both plates, so the pathetic crooks would be easy to track down later (unless of course both plates were stolen - I never found out).

As the cops showed up and the managers got P-spray neutralizer in their eyes (the only way to clear them, water doesn't help much) Tennessee came up and thanked me for helping him out, sheepishly asked if I would mind if he kept my participation in the late unpleasantness out of his report. I gladly yea enthusiastically said AMEN!! 

I hope he and his associate learned about how to, "hit 'em high and hit 'em low" so next time they don't bolix things up so badly.

And no, I never got a line of mention on the national Fox News website homepage afterward.