ANCHORAGE — A woman suspected of being impaired by the synthetic drug known as spice removed her clothes in an Anchorage restaurant and damaged furniture and fixtures.
The woman was subdued by police and taken to a hospital, Anchorage television station KTVA reported.
Police at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday were called to a Subway restaurant on the city’s east side.
Employees said the woman entered and began acting oddly, then took off her clothes and trashed the restaurant.
“People described her as ‘a little crazy,’” police Sgt. Shaun Henry said. “She disrobed, went fully nude and kinda just went nuts. Started breaking furniture, destroyed the store, knocked over computers, ripped the ceiling down, sprayed a fire extinguisher all over, locked herself in the bathroom for a while, broke just about everything you could find.”
Medics examined the woman and told police she had likely taken spice, a mixture of herbs and man-made chemicals once sold in gas stations and convenience stores and marketed as incense or potpourri. The concoction is illegal in Alaska
In August, Anchorage officials formed a task force to deal with the rising number of suspected spice overdoses. Henry said violent reaction is not unusual.
“You see all kinds of behavior,” he said. “Some people just lay down and go to sleep. Other people become extremely hostile or violent. You never know what you’re going to get and that’s part of the danger with it is you don’t know what it’s going to do to the human body and you get sometimes these very extreme reactions.”
The woman likely will face felony charges when she is released from medical care, Henry said.
“She did a significant amount of damage and it’s gonna take a while to fix the store,” Henry said. “It’s a mess.”
No one was injured during the incident.
