Occupy Wall Street protesters preoccupied with pepper spray and love

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It was bound to happen -- a budding romance between two protesters at Occupy Wall Street.

Kaylee Dedrick is still smarting from getting pepper-sprayed by a New York Police Department boss, but the painful memory has been alleviated by what it produced: a new beau named Robert Grodt.

According to the Daily News, Grodt came to Dedrick’s rescue after she was stung by pepper spray in her face on September 24.

A video of NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna spraying Dedrick near Union Square was widely viewed on the Internet and galvanized protesters with similar grievances around the world. It also brought Grodt, a volunteer medic for the protesters, rushing to Dedrick’s side as she collapsed on the pavement in agony, the News reported. He brought her into a nearby movie theater to recover and they bonded over their anger at what they believed to be excessive force by police.

The rest, as they say, is history.

‘Nothing strengthens a relationship like a chemical agent,’ Grodt quipped to the News. Grodt is an activist and journalist from Santa Cruz, Calif.; Dedrick is a teacher’s aide from Albany. Bologna is a high-ranking officer who was stripped of 10 days vacation over the incident.

During their interview with the News the couple did a lot of smooching and cooing.

In other Occupy Wall Street news, a local community board Monday night voted to require the protesters to limit the constant drumming at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to two hours a day and to require the protest movement to arrange for rest rooms for the occupants even at night, the News reported.

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--Geraldine Baum in New York