A man who allegedly pummeled a customer and then sprayed both him and his daughter with mace at a Bronx laundromat on Saturday night is now facing an assault charge, ABC News reported.
The assault, which happened inside a laundromat on White Plains Road in the Wakefield section of the Bronx at 6:10 p.m., was caught on camera (see video below).
The suspect, 27-year-old Fernando Gonzalez, turned himself into police at 8:20 p.m. on Monday, ABC reported.
The video shows Gonzalez holding down the customer, Derrick Dunn, holding him down with one hand and punching him with the other, The Daily News reported. Gonzalez then prepared a bottle of mace for use before spraying it on Dunn, 47, and his six-year-old daughter.
Rita Ferguson told ABC that she was at the laundromat when the attack occurred.
"It was really, really awful," she told the station. "The way he beat that man was horrible."
The video shows that someone attempted to intervene as Gonzalez pummeled Dunn, but he didn't stop the attack.
Witnesses told ABC that Gonzalez also sprayed the mace in the direction of other customers. "He started spraying, we thought it was a gun or something," Ferguson said.
Star Mercer, 11, was hospitalized after breathing in the mace. "I inhaled it," Mercer told ABC. "I couldn't breathe."
The incident apparently happened after Dunn and Gonzalez's girlfriend had argued at the laundromat over a plastic card customers use for pre-payment on washers and dryers, police told The New York Post. When the woman called her boyfriend, he showed up to confront the situation, according to the paper.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
