Police had been called to their apartment building late on Thursday night after the 41-year-old son was liquored up and running amok. The man had threatened a neighbour and thrown her walker into the bushes in front of the house, according to police from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He also dumped out a bucket on the neighbour’s front door and threatened the apartment manager.

But after the authorities arrived on the scene, neither he nor his elderly mother would allow police into their apartment and the two shouted insults at the officers behind the closed door. Police called a locksmith to open the door, intending to arrest the man and keep him from causing more strife.

By the time the door was opened the man had locked himself in another room, but as police tried to open that door his mother attacked them. She bit a female officer several times in the lower arm before she could be subdued. “The attack was halted by using pepper spray” on the snap-happy granny, police said in a statement.

Officers then broke down the door to the room where her inebriated son was hiding and apprehended him. He was released a few hours later after sobering up.