It was a quintessential LA story. Late yesterday afternoon, media outlets including the LA Times and KTLA quickly picked up an LAPD alert of a fight between several Hollywood Blvd. superhero characters. Catwoman was said to have pepper sprayed Jack Sparrow, with an alien and another pirate also involved in the fracass.

Only the victim wasn’t a Sparrow. After several hours of insane Twitter pick-up on this news, activity that pushed “Jack Sparrow” up the LA trending topics list, NBCLA reporters Samantha Tata and Kim Baldonado revealed that the target of an exasperated, harassed Catwoman was in fact an Ozzy Osbourne impersonator.

Should Ozzie be insulted that his likeness was mistaken for Captain Jack? Might Johnny Depp consider biting off the head of scurvy rat in a fifth Pirates flick, as a wink-wink? That’s all tbd. But in the meantime, even though Tata and Baldonado had Sparrow in their original report (since updated), theirs was the only initial dispatch that had otherwise accurate info about the exact sequence of events. As opposed to the increasingly embellished misinformation being spread last night via social media.

For her 11 p.m. newscast report, Baldonado spoke to the street’s Captain America, an Argentinian whose near unintelligble play-by-play of the incident was compensated for by some very descriptive pantomining. The reporter also took to Twitter last night to try and help out some of her media pals:

[Photo: Lev Radin/Shutterstock.com]