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Maryland woman slams boy’s head into plane window, hits him with bottle for calling her ‘Miss Piggy’
A Maryland woman, Kristy Crampton, faces child abuse charges for allegedly hitting a boy on a flight after he mocked her weight.
A Maryland woman is facing domestic child abuse charges after allegedly slamming a boy’s head into a plane window and hitting him with a water bottle, all because he mocked her weight and called her “Miss Piggy.”
Kristy Crampton, 46, was arrested after the Memorial Day flight from Orlando to Hagerstown, Maryland. According to an arrest report obtained by CBS News, the woman was returning from a trip to Disney World with the boy. Authorities have not disclosed the nature of their relationship.
Crampton told police the boy had been disrespectful during an argument and called her “fat” and “Miss Piggy.” She said she confiscated his phone, prompting him to push her arm off the armrest and accuse her of taking up too much space. Enraged, she allegedly “smacked him with her fist and then a water bottle… and ‘slammed’ his head into the airplane window,” the report said.
Witnesses on the flight said it wasn’t discipline, it was abuse. One passenger told police that the woman “was not correcting the child, she was abusing him, whipping the s**t out of the kid.”
Crampton was taken into custody at the airport and released on a $10,000 bond. She has now been charged with second-degree child abuse, second-degree assault and reckless endangerment.
Rise in violence on planes
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recorded 637 reports of unruly passenger behavior so far this year. While the number peaked in 2021 with nearly 6,000 incidents, the agency reported 1.6 incidents per 10,000 flights last week. In 2023, passengers were fined a total of $7.5 million for disruptive behavior.
Over Memorial Day weekend, in a separate incident, a man experiencing a mental health crisis attempted to open the emergency exit on a Houston-bound flight, forcing the plane to divert to Seattle. Last year, another passenger erupted on a Southwest Airlines flight after a baby wouldn’t stop crying, shouting, “Shut that baby up,” shocking other passengers.
