Another passenger says she was "looking sad" when she looked over and saw the man's text.
The passenger who claims she was fat-shamed on a plane says she “silently cried" after discovering that the stranger sitting next to her texted about a "smelly fatty."
"My eyes just happened to glance and saw the two words 'smelly fatty,'" Savannah Philips claimed. “Automatically I think he's referring to me. I just didn't know what to do. I kind of silently cried; [I] would wipe away a tear every now and then.”
Fellow passenger Chase Irwin, who was sitting across the aisle, also saw the insulting text and posted a short video to Snapchat.
“This guy just texted his wife that he is sitting next to a smelly fatty and is going to vomit. I watched her read his text and is now looking sad," he said in the video.
“I began noticing her wiping tears and my heart sank, I made me sick to my stomach," he told Inside Edition.
Irwin says he confronted the man.
“I grabbed him by the shoulder and I said, 'You are going to sit in the seat I was sitting in and I am going to sit here.' He said, 'Thank you but why, like what's wrong?' And I said, 'You are a heartless human being. I read the text that you were writing as well as she did and she is crying,'" Irwin claimed.
Irwin says he put his arm around Philips and comforted her and said he wouldn't tolerate what the guy did.
After they swapped seats, Philips called him her hero.
"I could not believe that someone would step forward like that and defend a total stranger," she said.
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