It sounds odd to me. I'm merely recollecting a news report from probably about 20 years ago, which is probably going to be hard to dig up. If it's another case of the press getting something totally wrong, that wouldn't be surprising.
And "the entire chamber being -sprayed- with liquid" plus "I felt like I was drowning" could easily get misquoted as well (or misremembered, 20 years ago is certainly more than long enough for me to screw up details).
So my guess is that what actually happened is something of that ilk.