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The Greatest Crime

 


WMAR-2 News Baltimore: Photos released of suspect connected to Friday’s Columbia gas station shooting.

Until I read the comments on Facebook I was under the impression that the crime was shooting someone.

Here’s the article itself:

Police release photos of suspect connected to Friday's Columbia gas station shooting, Dominick Philippe-Auguste, WMAR-2 News Baltimore 

You can be forgiven for making the same mistake. The journalist covering the story did, too.

Officers responded to the gas station in the 7200 block of Cradlerock Way, where they found an employee suffering from a gunshot wound.

But the photos changed everything.


Police photo used in conjunction with WMAR2News article 


If you read the comments the true crime emerges:

  • Suspect is fat.
  • Suspect is a fat woman
  • Suspect is a fat Black woman.

Folks just went to town with every fat joke in the book. Clearly they felt they had been given a free pass because our culture allows fat shaming and often even condones and encourages it. Women are most often the target because women’s bodies are considered to be open for general judgement and harassment. Add in the people who delight in injecting their racism into the mix and, well, it’s as vile as you can imagine.

When it comes to committing a violent crime, is body size a contributing factor? Does being fat make you more likely to shoot someone? How about being a fat woman? Or a fat Black woman?

In my opinion, that’s not what’s at work here. We’re not seeing analysis based on facts/statistical analysis. We’re seeing jeering and harassment from the crowd - - just the basest kind of behavior from people who know they can get away with it.

We read in novels set in the past about the crowd mentality that imparts a kind of permission to the nastiest kind of behaviors. Reading the comments on this article put me in mind of scenes where we see one person subjected to taunting, spitting, throwing of garbage, laughing derision.

Why? Is it because they are indignant that a crime has been committed in their community? 

No. They simply can’t resist mocking a fat person. And they know that no one is going to stop them. Why does our culture allow this? I think that maybe that’s a kind of crime we ought to address and work to eradicate.


Village Green/Town² Comments 

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  1. Julia A. McCreadyApril 19, 2026 at 4:02 AM

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