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I don’t want to say it was inevitable, but I was not entirely surprised to learn that a Burbank movie patron was so annoyed by someone using a phone during a recent screening that he turned a can of pepper spray on the offender.

About 40 minutes into a recent showing of “The Uprising,” according to witness Joe Rodriguez who spoke to KTLA-TV and posted about the incident on social media, “I heard the hiss of aerosol spray a few rows behind me. Someone yelled out, ‘I just got pepper-sprayed.’”

Police arrested 34-year-old Matthew Ware of Los Angeles in the lobby of the AMC Burbank 16 and later charged him with misdemeanor battery. Three people were treated at a local hospital, police said. On the arrest log, Ware is identified as a security guard.

The incident touched a nerve among smartphone-weary movie-lovers.

I admit, when I first saw the headline, I chuckled. And no, I do not think it’s funny to be assaulted with a chemical agent, but I have come to abhor people who use their phones in movie theaters, and the alleged perpetrator did something many of us have probably fantasized about.

Online comments were predictably vicious.

“The hero cinema needs,” someone posted on the Instagram feed Save Your Cinema.

“He’s my Luigi Mangione,” posted another, referring to the young man who gunned down the chief executive of United Healthcare in cold blood nearly two years ago.

“I hope this inspires copycats,” wrote another.

But I do hope it leads to people putting their damn phones........

© Los Angeles Times