It pays to pay attention to where you’re walking.

Seattle teacher Jesse Hagopian found that out the hard way.

Video shows him walking near a police line after giving a speech at a Martin Luther King Day rally only to be pepper sprayed by an officer.

The video provided by the NAACP and uploaded to YouTube is only 15 seconds long, but Hagopian can be seen walking into frame, on the phone, and then gets hit with pepper spray along with others standing nearby.

The NAACP says the 15 seconds is the extent of the video in their possession.

Hagopian says police had been pepper spraying protesters in other areas, but what had happened to him was unprovoked.

The teacher says he was chatting on his cell phone with his mother, on his way to his two-year old son’s birthday party.

“I felt the piercing pain shoot through my eye, my ear drum and my nostril, all over my cheek and face,” Hagopian tells KOMO. “I yelled out. My mom was in distress as she heard me yell.”

The video shows an elderly woman walking near Hagopian was hit, too.

The NAACP has filed a complaint with the city, bypassing the Office of Police Accountability “because of their lack of faith” in it.

The group has given the city 60 days to respond and they say if it ignores the request, they’ll file a lawsuit on Hagopian’s behalf.

“(Jesse) was pepper sprayed irrationally by a police officer – no provocation and no reason,” says Hagopian’s attorney, James Bible. “We view this as a challenge to free speech.”

KOMO reports the police department “isn’t talking” about the incident.