A 2011 viral video of an NYPD officer blasting Occupy Wall Street protesters with pepper spray continues to bring in cash settlements for OWS protestors. Yesterday, OWSers Chelsea Elliott and Jeanne Mansfield got $60,000 each from the city. And today, Kaylee Dedrick, a teacher's aid from Albany, settled for $55,000.
But cash is a secondary, if more tangible, boon for Dedrick, who met the future father of her child in the immediate aftermath of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna's pepper-spray blast. The News reports that Robert Grodt, an OWSer and journalist from Santa Cruz, "rushed to Dedrick’s aide" when Bologna sprayed her. Within a year, the couple had a baby. They've been together ever since.
Dedrick's lawyer Ron Kuby, clearly pleased with the settlement, gushed about the lovebirds. "The money is going to be put in the occu-baby’s college fund to help create the next gen of occupiers,” he told the News.
“They adopted a rescue occu-dog and they’re a happy occu-family," Kuby added, doing his best, for some reason, to make "occu-" a cool prefix.
