Extremists take credit for attack on fur store
Bethany Lindsay
ctvbc.ca
Monday Jun. 27, 2011
An extreme animal rights group
associated with vandalism and bombings around the world has claimed
responsibility for a chemical attack at a Vancouver fur store overnight.
James Laurenson, the owner of Speiser Furs on Granville Street, arrived
at work Monday morning to find the locks to his store glued shut. When he
was finally able to get inside, he discovered that his merchandise had been
sprayed with some sort of chemical, an attack that the Animal Liberation
Front is taking credit for.
"There was this acrid smell; it smelled
like chlorine or bleach," Laurenson told CTV News. "All the coats on the
right side, about 25 feet into the store, were covered in this bleach
liquid." The spray caused the colour to leach out of the clothing, ruining
some coats worth more than $5,000 each. "It's useless. There's nothing to
salvage," Laurenson said, adding that it was too early to put an estimate on
the value of the damage done.
The ALF, a group of militant animal
activists that "liberates" animals from fur farms and has been connected to
bombings in Mexico, Russia and the U.K., took responsibility for the
destruction in a press release on Monday. "Tonight we took action against
one of Vancouver's cruelest businesses -- Speiser Furs," the release said.
"We brought a backpack with us and in it was an industrial pressurized
chemical sprayer with a two-foot-long spraying wand. We inserted the
spraying wand into their mail slot and sprayed four litres of a highly
corrosive chemical onto their racks of jackets."
The group says that
it glued the store's locks shut to allow the chemical more time to destroy
the coats in what it terms an "act of economic sabotage."
Laurenson, who
has been in the fur business since 1949, says he's faced countless protests
and acts of vandalism during his career, including protesters who've thrown
balls containing red paint through the windows. "We've had a lot of these
kind of people," he said. "We just have to get new product. I can't let them
turn me."
He did add, however, that changing attitudes about leather
and fur have led him to stock more non-animal products in recent years.
Contact: (213) 640-5048
Animal Liberation Press Office
3371
Glendale Blvd. #107
Los Angeles, CA 90039
www.animalliberationpressoffice.org
press@animalliberationpressoffice.org
