Using your phone during a film might be one of cinema’s biggest unwritten rules, but an alleged confrontation at a Los Angeles-area movie theater escalated far beyond a dispute over movie etiquette.

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A 34-year-old man was arrested after allegedly pepper-spraying another moviegoer who had been using a cellphone during a film at a theater in Burbank, NBC Los Angeles reports.

Police were called to the AMC 16 theater at around 5:30PM on September 15 following reports that one patron had sprayed another with pepper spray inside the theater.

According to investigators, the suspect, identified as Matthew Ware, had become upset with another person who was using a cellphone while the movie was playing.

Ware then allegedly sprayed the moviegoer with pepper spray.

The effects were reportedly not limited to the person involved in the confrontation, with two other moviegoers experiencing irritation from the spray. Both were treated at a local hospital.

Witness Joe Rodriguez was sitting in the row immediately in front of where the incident unfolded and said the disruption came around 40 minutes into the movie.

Until then, he said there had been nothing particularly unusual happening around him.

“Everything was normal and all of a sudden behind me, I hear the sound of an aerosol can, like a spray,” Rodriguez told NBC News. “And a guy just yells out, ‘I just got pepper sprayed. This guy just pepper sprayed me.'”

Rodriguez said he then saw Ware immediately run out of the theater.

Three other moviegoers appeared to pursue him before eventually locating him elsewhere inside the theater.

The Burbank Police Department responded to the incident and Ware later spoke with officers.

Rodriguez said that after watching the interaction between Ware and police, he did not believe the confrontation had been an act of self-defense.

He recalled one particular comment that stood out to him.

“The thing that stuck out the most was him saying that the guy on the phone ‘got smart’ with him,” Rodriguez told NBC News. “This was just a guy who was frustrated and lashed out because a guy was being rude at the movies.”

Police did not immediately provide further information about what happened in the moments leading up to the confrontation.

Additional details about the condition of the moviegoers involved have not been immediately provided.

Ware was ultimately arrested following the incident and booked into Burbank Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor battery, according to police.

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