Woman Loses It After EBT Card Won't Cover Purchase, Slugs Store Clerk: Police
Call it a postcard from the entitlement culture.
Shelby Parham is a 20-year-old mother of a 1-year-old child who lives in Michigan. Apparently, the mom’s electronics benefits transfer, or EBT, card didn’t have as much money on it as she thought it did.
So, she did what any sensible person whose remaining dole portion wasn’t as large as their purchase was: She apparently knocked out the cashier. In front of her kid. Good parenting there.
According to WJBK-TV in Detroit, the 20-year-old is facing a charge of aggravated assault after she rendered the 49-year-old clerk unconscious at the St. Clair Shores, Michigan, Kroger grocery store on Tuesday.
Parham, police say, was in the self-checkout lane when her EBT card — called a Bridge card in Michigan — didn’t have enough money to cover her purchase.
She asked the clerk for help in deducting some items, which the clerk couldn’t help with at that moment.
“The employee walked away from her. … the defendant was upset and followed her and struck her in the face,” St. Clair Shores Police Detective Gordon Carrier told WJBK.
“The victim did lose consciousness for a bit, and was transported to the hospital for treatment of head injury.”
The cashier was, as of WJBK’s Wednesday report, taking time off from work due to her injuries.
The incident was caught on the store’s security cameras. As you can see, Parham’s child is in the cart as she decks the cashier:
NEW: A Michigan mother has been charged with assault after knocking out a Kroger employee.
The attacker, Shelby Parham, had her 1 year old child with her during the assault in St. Clair Shores.
The incident happened after Parham and the 49-year old store worker were exchanging… pic.twitter.com/Ucx270EWi9
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 8, 2023
Carrier told the station that the 20-year-old will now face “a misdemeanor charge. However, it is an enhanced charge of aggravated assault.”
“It’s obviously very clear-cut. There’s no questions as to who’s at fault here,” he added.
The aggravated assault charge carries a one-year sentence if she’s convicted. She’s been released from custody on a $1,000 bond.
The lesson here? According to WJBK, Carrier said he’s “asking the public to take an extra second this holiday season before doing something they will regret.”
“Everybody can be stressed out, right?” he said. “There’s got to be better resolutions than violence.”
Yes, one might indeed say that. One might also note another obvious lesson for the average person: that entitlement culture breeds, well, entitlement.
I would guarantee that 99 percent of the people reading this — and that’s a conservative estimate, really — have had a frustrating experience with customer service somewhere at some point. If you aren’t reading this from prison or while you wait for your parole officer to see you, chances are you haven’t dealt with it by splaying the customer service representative on the floor with a knock upside the head.
In most cases, I would also venture to guess, that frustrating experience with customer service had something to do with goods bought and/or services rendered using money we or someone in our household earned. Not Parham. Her money came from taxpayers.
And, when it didn’t cover what she wanted to buy and there wasn’t someone available at that very moment to help her subtract items, her decision? Apparently, to punch the person who wasn’t available for not being on hand at the snap of her fingers.
It’s almost as if there’s a connection between entitlement meaning handout and entitlement meaning the belief one deserves special privileges they haven’t earned. Funny how that works.
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