TODAY: Poisoned pageant?Nov. 28: Ingrid Marie Rivera talks to TODAY’s Meredith Vieira for the first time about the supposed pepper spray incident and what’s next for her.
Today show
Today show
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 9:07 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 28, 2007
Newly crowned Miss Puerto Rico Ingrid Marie Rivera insisted in an exclusive interview Wednesday that she wasn’t just imagining the redness, itching and swelling she says she experienced during last week’s pageant in San Juan.
“It’s not a nervous reaction. It’s not made up. It’s a beauty pageant, why would I do that to myself?” she told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira during a live interview in New York.
After the pageant finals last Friday, Rivera had suggested that someone had put pepper spray on her evening gown, bikini and makeup brushes, causing her to break out in hives. But, as NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported from San Juan, investigators are skeptical that pepper spray was involved and other contestants have wondered why no swelling or redness was evident while she was on stage.
After the pageant finals last Friday, Rivera had suggested that someone had put pepper spray on her evening gown, bikini and makeup brushes, causing her to break out in hives. But, as NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported from San Juan, investigators are skeptical that pepper spray was involved and other contestants have wondered why no swelling or redness was evident while she was on stage.
Sanders also reported that there was jealousy among some of the more than 20 other contestants, who thought Rivera had an unfair advantage because she had been a judge of the pageant the previous year and now was a contestant.
Rivera said she told security guards it might be pepper spray, but turned over the gown she wore in the finals and the makeup brushes to police for forensic investigation. She said she had first noticed something on her clothing and brushes during the preliminary round of the competition, when she re-did her makeup and changed from a bikini to an evening gown.
“I used a brush to do a bit of my face with powder and also to brush my chest, because it was a strapless dress,” she said. “After less than a minute, I began itching, burning, redness, swollen — [a] horrible feeling.”
Rivera said she told security guards it might be pepper spray, but turned over the gown she wore in the finals and the makeup brushes to police for forensic investigation. She said she had first noticed something on her clothing and brushes during the preliminary round of the competition, when she re-did her makeup and changed from a bikini to an evening gown.
“I used a brush to do a bit of my face with powder and also to brush my chest, because it was a strapless dress,” she said. “After less than a minute, I began itching, burning, redness, swollen — [a] horrible feeling.”
‘I wanted to stay focused’She said the symptoms were so bad she didn’t want a pageant official to touch her to pin her sash to her dress.
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