The one in front of the middle bench looked like a canvas cooler, and he saw them pull fresh Budweisers from it. The other was a large, green, Army-style backpack that was shoved under the bench by the steel wall. We walked around the tower and saw a couple of guys picking up beer cans.
Richard Jewell: It was just that casual. There were at least a couple hundred people sitting on a grassy knoll in front of the tower. Davis and Jewell quickly asked those closest to the benches if the bag belonged to them. When no one claimed it, Davis followed procedure; he declared it a suspicious package and called for the bomb team. Jewell radioed his supervisor. They then cleared a fifteen-foot perimeter so the bomb team would have room to check out the backpack.
It was a. One minute later, Rudolph called from a pay phone five blocks away from the tower. You have thirty minutes. While Davis waited for the bomb team, Jewell went inside the five-story sound tower. Law enforcement is on the scene, and they [are] checking it. If I come back in here and tell you to get out, there will be no questions, there will be no hesitation.
After I got to the top, I came back down, and the whole time I was counting people. I wanted to make sure I knew how many people I had in the tower. By the time Jewell emerged, the bomb team had arrived. Jewell: The guys looked at it from every angle, and then finally one of them took out a penlight and laid down on the ground and crawled under the bench, and then he loosened the bag and shined the light inside.
All of a sudden. Davis and Ahring were quickly joined by other officers to help get the crowd away from the tower, and to do it without inducing panic.
Jewell hurried back into the tower, which stood to take the brunt of the impact if the bomb exploded. Get out now! Up to the fourth floor. I grabbed both of them and pushed them down the stairs. I came down to the video floor. I reached over there and grabbed him by the arm and just drug him down the stairs with me.
Came down to the third floor. It was clear. Went down to the second floor. Everybody had cleared out of there. Went down to the first floor. Checked it again. I was the last one out of the building. Is the tower clear? All these benches were still full of people. Every one of them had four and five people on them. The [officers] lined theirselves up with the benches. When that thing went off, they took all the shrapnel that those people would have took.
Davis: I know exactly where I was standing when it went off; I was eighteen steps from where it detonated. It was very loud, and it was very forceful.
The vacuum it created was immense and shoved me forward. I remember the heat from it on my back. Ahring: I was just ten yards away. The concussion knocked me forward six feet, and I wound up on the ground. There was a sudden deathly quiet throughout the whole park, and I could hear the whistle of shrapnel whizzing through the air. Those troopers that had been lined up with those benches were flying through the air. It had knocked them that far. Every one of these guys is a bigger fucking hero than I am.
I mean, it wells me up every time I think about it. Alice Hawthorne, forty-four, who had driven from Albany, was killed by shrapnel.
Hawthorne was hit six times, including a fatal wound to the head. Melih Uzunyol, a Turkish news cameraman, died of a heart attack while rushing to the scene.
In total, others were injured. Ahring was hit in his left shoulder and lower left leg. Davis was hit as well, in the buttocks. But the GBI badge holder in his back pocket blocked the shrapnel. Among the injured was John Fristoe, a stagehand who heard about the bomb threat from security and was walking toward the tower to warn a friend inside. The force of the blast caused a whiplash that collapsed a disc in his neck, an injury that almost paralyzed him. John Fristoe: Ms.
Hawthorne, I saw her. She was coming down the hill [head over heels]. It was horrible, man. Davis: It was utter chaos. We had troopers down and agents down. There was screaming and hollering. I remember checking on Ms. She had already expired. A man beside her was bleeding profusely from the stomach area where shrapnel hit him.
The Centennial Park bombing put the city into a state of shock. The immediate question was whether the Games would continue—was it even safe for the Games to continue? Today he is editor of Around the Rings , a web-based publication considered an authoritative media source of Olympic news.
Ed Hula: There were questions: Is this an isolated instance? Will there be more of these? How can we go on with the Olympics with a couple of people dead? There was precedent—the Munich Games in That was more dastardly, more consequential, and much more of a significant event than the Centennial Park bombing.
And those Games continued. Nancy Geery: During the Olympics, I worked at a recruiting firm. Everyone was caught up in the spirit of the Games, and I wanted to be involved, so I worked nights in a Swatch kiosk selling watches. I was in the park the night of the bombing. It was very festive, a lot of camaraderie.
Afterwards there was fear in the back of your mind. I was twenty-six at the time. I had tickets to the track and field finals, really fantastic seats, and I went. At that age, I was not as afraid of things. Cox: The city had been on a euphoric high because of the Olympics for weeks and weeks.
The bombing was a sucker punch to the gut. I was outraged that someone would do that to the Olympics in my hometown. The bombing, which occurred during a free concert, killed a mother who had brought her daughter to hear the rock music and injured more than others, including a Turkish cameraman who suffered a fatal heart attack after the blast. Police were warned of the bombing in advance, but the bomb exploded before the anonymous caller said it would, leading authorities to suspect that the law enforcement officers who descended on the park were indirectly targeted.
Within a few days, Richard Jewell, a security guard at the concert, was under investigation for the crime. However, evidence against him was dubious at best, and in October he was fully cleared of all responsibility in the bombing. An hour later, while police and ambulance workers were still at the scene, a second blast went off near a large trash bin, injuring seven people.
As at Centennial Park, a nail-laden bomb was used and authorities were targeted. Then, only five days later, also in Atlanta, a nail-laden bomb exploded near the patio area of a crowded gay and lesbian nightclub, injuring five people. A second bomb in a backpack was found outside after the first explosion, but police safely detonated it. Federal investigators linked the bombings, but no suspect was arrested. On January 29, , an abortion clinic was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama , killing an off-duty police officer and critically wounding a nurse.
Former ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young said the monument is a symbol of the City of Atlanta's unity in the wake of the bombing. Young said he was at a hospital in the hours after the bombing and said he was proud of the response of the city's emergency services. Young lamented the fate of Jewell's reputation.
Freeze Warning. Frost Advisory. Richard Jewell honored during Centennial Olympic Park dedication Event organizers honored Jewell for his heroic efforts before the deadly bombing.
0コメント