  The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is a ground based
air-shower array deployed on the slopes of Volcan Sierra Negra in the state of
Puebla, Mexico. While HAWC is optimized for the detection of gamma-ray induced
air-showers, the background flux of hadronic cosmic-rays is four orders of
magnitude greater, making background rejection paramount for gamma-ray
observations. On average, gamma-ray and cosmic-ray showers are characterized by
different topologies at ground level. We will present a method to identify the
primary particle type in an air-shower that uses the spatial relationship of
triggered PMTs (or "hits") in the detector. For a given event hit-pattern on
the HAWC array, we calculate the mean separation distance of the hits for a
subset of hit pairs weighted by their charges. By comparing the mean charge and
mean separating distance for the selected hits, we infer the identity of the
event's primary. We will report on the efficiency for identifying gamma-rays
and the performance of the technique with simulation.
