Fort Worth Police Use Pepper Spray to Quell Riot Sparked by Release of New Air Jordans

If you haven't been keeping up with the sneaker industry recently, you probably didn't know that today was one of the red-letter days on the calendar, when the new Air Jordan XI Retro "Breds" were set to be released. Several hundred were quite aware and showed up early this morning...

By Eric Nicholson

December 21, 2012

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If you haven't been keeping up with the sneaker industry recently, you probably didn't know that today was one of the red-letter days on the calendar, when the new Air Jordan XI Retro "Breds" were set to be released. Several hundred were quite aware and showed up early this morning at the Shoe Palace in Hulen Mall.

Then, apparently, all hell broke loose.

These shoes caused a small riot at Hulen Mall. 300-400 people were pepper sprayed. No serious injuries @nbcdfw
— Keaton Fox (@KeatonFoxNBC5) December 21, 2012

Sgt. Pedro Criado with the Fort Worth PD confirmed that officers had been called to the mall to help quell an unruly crowd that had lined up before the store opened. As for the claim that 400 people were pepper sprayed, he was skeptical. "I don't know about that."

Criado said a captain is on scene gathering information. So is NBC 5, in force.

FWPD departing Hulen Mall, situation involving Air Jordan release is over, pepper spray was used, 350-400 here at time twitter.com/CVHReports/sta...
— Chris Van Horne (@CVHReports) December 21, 2012

Update at 12:13 p.m.: Here's some video from WFAA.

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