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The King Of Karaoke
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 Posted - 08/29/2007 : 13:19:18
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Richard Jewell Dies at 44
Richard Jewell, the security guard wrongly accused in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, has died. He was 44.
According to Meriwether County Coroner Johnny Worley, Jewell died on Wednesday morning due to complications from diabetes. He was discovered by his wife at about 9 a.m., and was transported to Warm Springs Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11:15 a.m.
"There's no suspicion whatsoever of any type of foul play. He had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems," Worley said.
The GBI planned to do an autopsy Thursday, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.
After 12 weeks of scrutiny following the bombing, Jewell was cleared by the FBI and U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander in an unprecedented government acknowledgment of wrongful accusation.
"I am not the Olympic park bomber," Jewell told reporters after being cleared. "I am a man who has lived 88 days afraid of being arrested for a crime I did not commit."
The FBI, Jewell said, trampled on his rights "in its rush to show the world it could get its man," while the news media "cared nothing about my feelings as a human being" in its rush to get a story on the bombing.
Jewell was working as a private security guard in Centennial Olympic Park about 1 a.m. on July 27 when he identified a suspicious unidentified package and began moving people away from it. The package turned out to contain the bomb, which went off, killing one person and wounding more than 100.
He was originally hailed as a hero for moving people away, but he was later thrust into a different light when the FBI suspected that he had set off the bomb to give himself an opportunity to be a hero.
For weeks, reporters and camera crews camped outside Jewell's Atlanta apartment, capturing every move that he -- and the FBI -- made.
He later sued the FBI and several media organizations. CNN and NBC were among the organizations that settled with him.
In April, 2005, Eric Robert Rudolph pleaded guilty to the bombing. Rudolph was captured in Murphy, North Carolina, in May 2003 after one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history.
Rudolph also pleaded guilty to a 1998 bombing at a family planning clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed a police officer and two 1997 bombings at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub in Georgia.
He is serving four consecutive life sentences plus 120 years for the attacks.
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Network - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTN3s2iVKKI
Orwell 1984 - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5464625623984168940 |
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True American Hero Dies. R.I.P.
