Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : 22 Treated After Pepper Spray Attack at School

Twenty-two people, including five children from a Palmdale elementary school, were taken to local hospitals Monday after being exposed to pepper spray, a non-lethal irritant allegedly sprayed in the school’s lobby by three juveniles who were later arrested.

Several dozen employees and students were evacuated from the main administration building--which houses the school office, cafeteria and a multipurpose room--at Yucca School about 9 a.m. Monday after several people began feeling nauseous, authorities said.

Initially all investigators knew was that irritating fumes were coming through the building’s ventilation system and people were feeling sick to their stomachs as well as tightness in their chests and soreness in their throats.

More than an hour later, as a county Fire Department hazardous-materials squad that had come to Palmdale from the Santa Clarita Valley was readying to enter the evacuated building, the Sheriff’s Department said it had detained three youths for spraying pepper spray inside the school lobby.

The spray, made using an oil extract from the cayenne pepper plant, is legally available for use on humans only to law-enforcement personnel, according to a spokeswoman in the state attorney general’s office. A type of pepper spray can be purchased through pet-supply and sporting-goods outlets, but its legal use is limited to animals.

It was unknown Monday where the three Palmdale youths--a 13-year-old girl and two boys aged 12 and 13--got the spray, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s officials also did not know why the juveniles, who were arrested for assault with caustic chemicals, a felony, dispersed the pepper spray in the lobby of the K-6 school where they were once students.

The five children and 17 adults taken to three area hospitals were treated and released Monday. The three juveniles who were arrested were released to their parents.