A mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to block the Congress from affirming the outcome of the 2020 election in president-elect Joe Biden's favor.
In the immediate aftermath of the infiltration, a video of a woman telling a reporter that she had been maced inside the Capitol building was widely circulated on social media.
"I got maced," the seemingly distressed woman, identified as Elizabeth Koch from Knoxville, Tennessee, can be heard telling the reporter before adding that she was trying to get inside the Capitol building when she was pepper-sprayed and pushed out of the building. Watch the video below:
Elizabeth Was Using an Onion to Make Herself Cry?
The video, shared by Yahoo News reporter Hunter Walker, instantly went viral, with netizens mocking the woman for crying over her staged coup attempt. However, the video drew more attention after some people noticed that the woman was holding what appeared to be a raw onion wrapped in a towel and rubbing her eyes with it.
This led many to believe that Koch was using the onion to 'fake' tears and then lie about being maced. "She's got an onion in a towel and she's rubbing it in her eye. Are you sure she was sprayed?," wrote one user, while another commented, "She's rubbing her eyes with an onion and then claiming she was maced!?"
However, that does not seem to be the case. We do know that the police did use tear gas at some point during the pro-Trump riot. While we do not know the details of Koch's involvement in Wednesday's events at the U.S. Capitol, the fact that she is holding an onion does provide credibility to her claim that she was indeed maced.
Turns out, it is a common misconception protesters have that onions help alleviate the burning sensation in the eyes after being tear-gassed or maced. The combination of onions and vinegar has previously been used by Palestinian demonstrators to neutralize the effects of tear gas particles. However, this remedy has not yet been proven and has been dubbed as a "myth" by the INSI.
