I can understand that. Wrong way to go, but I can understand.

Hopefully the girl learns something from this.  She didn't deserve being pepper-sprayed, but needed someone stepping in to interfere.

If Whittle truely hasn't had any incidents in the past, I do hope he is given an appropriate punishment and not something that does no good for anyone.  It sounds like he had to go to his car to get the pepper-spray and it wasn't a 2 second snap decision that he couldn't back down from.

I'm not sure how this should have been handled.  Pepper spray was not the answer.  Perhaps as soon as this became a problem his partner should have done something - spoken to the girl, to his boss or mall security, or to the police.  There are laws against harassment.  But, other than supporting his partner, the guy should have stayed out of it.  I presum his partner is an adult and capable of looking after his own business. 

Seeler, I agree, but without the whole story it is hard to know what was done.

Did the person who was taunted say anything to the girl?  Did he say anything at work?  If he did, did the company do anything?

My guess would be that police were never contacted (before pepper spray was used), or else that likely would have been included in the article.

Taunting, harrassment and bullying aren't acceptable, but violence isn't an appropriate response.  It didn't sound like the girl made any threats, you would think a grown man could have come up with a better response in dealing with teen, or what he thought was a young adult.

It seems to me that the current way of dealing with such abuse is to record it with your phone, and than post it on Youtube. 

See My Tram Experience  

and

Making The Bus Monitor Cry  

The abuser in My Tram Experience continued her slurs and refused to apologise and went to jail and lost custody of her children.

While the Kids 2on Making The Bus Monitor Cry aplogised, and yesterday the bus monitor was given $700,000, by donors on the net, collected by a Toronto man.