Woman who maced coworker over shift coverage sentenced to probation

A woman who maced her coworker over shift coverage has been sentenced to two years of supervised county probation.

Nancy Ross Lyons, 33, of Mankato, was convicted of using tear gas to immobilize, a gross misdemeanor, in Blue Earth County Court.

Lyons was initially charged with a felony, but the charge was downgraded, with Judge Krista J. Jass noting in a sentencing departure report that the crime was “less onerous than usual.”

Judge Jass stayed a 364-day jail sentence for Lyons’s two-year probationary period and ordered her to pay $354 in court fees.

In August, Lyons maced a coworker who backed out of covering a shift for Lyons at the River Suites Hotel on West Lind St.   Lyons told police at the time that the macing was unprovoked.