A Quadriplegic Murderer is Monstrous/Inspiring/Educational

Disabled people really are just like everyone else!

The mug shot for Dayton Webber, who is accused of murder in Maryland.

It’s not every day that you see a headline that’s horrifying, inspiring, and utterly fucking baffling, but this one definitely counts:

Some explanation is required. Actually, all the explanation is required.

Let’s start with “cornhole pro”. I realize that you might be wary of having “cornhole pro” explained to you — if someone introduced himself to me by saying “I’m a cornhole pro”, I wouldn’t say “Oh, describe that in detail, please!” “Cornhole pro” also really sounds like an anti-gay slur that got mistranslated from another language. But everything’s cool here: Cornhole is a game, and apparently you can be a professional at that game as long as you’re okay with skipping the fame, money, and sex opportunities that usually come with being a pro athlete. And the guy in question — Dayton Webber — was a cornhole pro: Here he is in an ESPN profile that will soon be tossed into whatever bottomless pit ESPN used for their OJ Simpson and Oscar Pistorius content.

Now for the “while driving” part. Dayton Webber could drive. I don’t know exactly what kid-from-Indiana-Jones-type setup he had, but he had one, and he was using it during the incident. As for the shooting part, we have video of Dayton Webber loading and shooting a gun. All of this raises questions about whether it’s maybe too easy to obtain a driver’s license and/or a gun in the US, but I’ll table those issues and focus on the inspiring fact that a man with no arms and legs could drive, shoot a gun, and apparently do both at the same time (while intimidating witnesses!). That’s remarkable — Webber is like Forrest Gump if instead of overcoming his challenges to play football and win the Medal of Honor, Gump committed a brutal murder and then dumped the body by the road.

ALLEGEDLY. The case hasn’t gone to trial — maybe a different man with no arms and no legs shot Bradrick Michael Wells in front of two witnesses and then fled the state. Note that the title of this article says that “A Quadriplegic Murderer is Monstrous/Inspiring/Educational” — I didn’t say which quadriplegic murderer I was talking about! There might be many quadruple amputee killers out there, and if there aren’t, there can be. Don’t let anyone tell a quadriplegic young person that they can’t grow up to be a moral ghoul whose name is synonymous with a heinous crime — they can do anything!

And let’s take a moment to reflect on a way of thinking about disabilities that I this is probably pretty common but infrequently said out loud. And that thinking — which I agree with — is that people with disabilities are just like anyone else. If you take a step back, it’s clear that every person alive has challenges; mine are bad knees and tolerating people who say “cinema” instead of “movies”. Our challenges are not equally difficult to overcome — I’m not suggesting for a second that my issues are the same as, say, a person born with no digestive tract — but “facing challenges” is a universal experience. So, in a way, we’re all in the same category. Some people require accommodations that others don’t, but that’s a difference of degree, not kind. We use the word “disability” for practical reasons, but humanity remains one group of people.

I feel like that’s worth saying because sometimes, the dominant attitude seems to be one that views people with disabilities as borderline magical. There’s a condescending, Instagram story-style way of portraying disabled people that basically treats them as inspiration fodder — they’re not just like non-disabled people, they’re better! As if a disabled person shrewdly swapped some ability in exchange for an unimpeachable moral compass. And this sunny do-gooder view of disabled people strips them of their humanity, because one unmissable aspect of humanity is that some humans suck.

So, in a very weird way: Kudos, Dayton Webber. You’ve done yeoman’s work to remind us that quadruple amputees are just like everyone else. ALLEGEDLY. I suppose it’s possible that this story could take an unfortunate turn, and it will turn out that Dayton Webber didn’t shoot a guy during an argument and then push his body out of a car — that really would be unfortunate. Because as it stands, Webber has advanced perceptions of disabled people by showing that sometimes they’re monstrous and uncaring, which is to say: fully human.

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