Bachelor party guests burned by exotic dancer with pepper spray

A bachelor party in Vancouver turned ugly, after briefly merging with a bachelorette party in the city's Downtown Eastside.

Clinton Cooney and some friends were celebrating his upcoming wedding Saturday night on a party bus, when the revelry went very wrong in front of No. 5 Orange, a bar that boasts erotic dancers and wild bachelor parties.

Several women taking part in a bachelorette party reportedly got off their own party bus and joined Cooney's group, which had hired erotic dancers, according to one of the partygoers, Sheldon Day.

"We were just hanging out in our limo bus, and we had a couple stripper friends," said one of the men, who declined to give his real name.

The man said two women ended up in a fracas. That's when one of the dancers pulled pepper spray on one of the women from the bachelorette party.

"They got into a little scuffle, and next thing you know, 'pshshsh,' sprayed the whole place," he said.

"I was just trying to keep everybody calm," the man said. "I tried telling everybody, you know, cover their mouth and get off the bus."

A firefighter said fewer than 10 people suffered significant irritation from the pepper spray.

Both men and women could be seen outside the long black bus rinsing out their eyes, with the help of paramedics with the B.C. Ambulance Service and Vancouver firefighters.

Once everyone had recovered, both parties went their separate ways.

The bride-to-be, whose name couldn't be confirmed, said many of her friends were affected, but she was OK.

"I didn't get sprayed," she said. "I don't get on random buses."