ATLANTA — Police are looking for a female suspect who pepper-sprayed a woman at a Buckhead gas station over using a gas pump.
The victim said it happened in front of her 11-year-old son, and she wants police to catch the suspect before she does it to someone else.
It happened on April 29 at the Chevron on Pharr Road and Grandview Avenue.
Mary Margaret Neal told Channel 2's Tyisha Fernandes that she is still shaken up from being pepper-sprayed in the eyes.
“I really felt like my face was on fire,” she said.
Neal said she's never been pepper-sprayed before and she certainly didn't think her first experience would be at the gas station she uses all the time.
“It just shocked me,” she said.
It all started Saturday afternoon around 2 p.m.
Neal said she pulled in to get gas with her 11-year-old son in the passenger seat.
She said a woman, who’s now an assault suspect, pulled right in front of her and not only blocked the pump she was going to use, but also blocked the pump behind it.
“So I just rolled my window down and I said ‘Oh excuse me, I was pulling into this pump as well. Would you mind scooting up to the next one?’” she said.
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Neal said that's when the suspect started cursing at her
“With language I've never had directed towards me, much less in front of my child,” she said. “I was stunned.”
Neal said she stayed outside and pumped her gas while the suspect walked inside the store.
“I since found out that she said inside the gas station, ‘I'm gonna go outside and (expletive) and teach this girl a lesson,” Neal said. “The next thing I know she's spraying the mace. I've had two kids and I've never felt worse pain in my life.”
Several good Samaritans jumped in to help Neal. One man got some ice and gave her a shirt out of his trunk.
“A very soft Auburn T-shirt out of his car and I know it was one of his favorites so if he sees this, I want to return his shirt,” she said.
Another woman made sure her son was OK.
Neal said she wants everyone to learn a lesson from what happened to her – when people aren’t being nice, don’t say a word to them.
“I think it was the mother in me, honestly, that thought I could reason with the girl,” she said.
Neal said at the time this all happened, she was being blocked in by two other cars. She said she thinks they may have been working together to steal her car.
Neal is hoping surveillance cameras at the gas station captured the attack, but police have not said whether they were able to get any footage from them.