{"id":448315,"date":"2026-08-30T20:58:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T20:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/448315\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T20:58:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T20:58:24","slug":"police-shoplifter-attacked-berkeley-cvs-clerk-with-bear-spray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/448315\/","title":{"rendered":"Police: Shoplifter attacked Berkeley CVS clerk with bear spray"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman attacked a CVS employee with bear spray, which also hit a nearby customer, after getting kicked out of the North Berkeley store for stealing Wednesday, police said.<\/p>\n

A 911 caller first reported the attack at the pharmacy at 1451 Shattuck Ave. shortly after 6 p.m., according to Berkeley police.<\/p>\n

The woman, whom a CVS employee recognized as someone who had stolen items before, went to the store with a child; the employee saw her \u201cconcealing merchandise in her tote bag\u201d and \u201ctold her to leave,\u201d police spokesperson Officer Byron White wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

The woman left with her child, but returned with bear spray \u2014 which is chemically similar to pepper spray \u2014 using it on a different worker, police said. Some of the spray \u201calso landed on a 76-year-old customer in the checkout line,\u201d White wrote. Berkeley Fire Department medics treated both people at the scene.<\/p>\n

Police were still looking for the woman as of Thursday.<\/p>\n

Featured photo credit: The Associated Press\/Rogelio V. Solis<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlex N. Gecan joined Berkeleyside in 2023 as a senior reporter covering public safety. He has covered criminal justice, courts and breaking and local news for The Middletown Press, Stamford Advocate and…\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Alex N. Gecan\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman attacked a CVS employee with bear spray, which also hit a nearby customer, after getting kicked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[21375,7872,177496,2465,2466,4942,143,145,144,8763],"class_list":["post-448315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-fire-department","tag-berkeley-police-department","tag-cvs-pharmacy","tag-home-highlight","tag-home-lead","tag-north-berkeley","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-policing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}