The security guard hailed as a hero after alerting police to a pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park last Saturday was being questioned by the FBI after an Atlanta newspaper named him as the leading suspect in the bombing.
The guard, Richard Jewell, 33, denied to reporters that he placed the bomb and said he had been questioned repeatedly by federal agents investigating the blast that left two people dead and injured another 111.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in a rare extra edition Tuesday afternoon, published a front-page story under a banner headline naming Jewell as the chief suspect in the bombing. The paper did not cite any sources for its report.
“He looks good now, but there have been no arrests and the investigation is still continuing,” a federal law enforcement source in Washington told The Associated Press, speaking on condition he not be identified.
Three undercover law enforcement cars were parked outside the two-bedroom apartment Jewell shares with his mother in a working-class section of Atlanta. Officials did not move in for an arrest, and federal and local authorities did not identify him publicly as a suspect.
The park where the bombing took place was reopened Tuesday with a ceremony honoring the victims of the blast and celebrating the triumph of the human spirit.
A few miles away, Jewell’s apartment northwest of downtown was inundated by journalists from around the world and police officers. Jewell arrived home Tuesday night after being questioned by the FBI, driving a rusting blue Toyota pickup, and immediately was mobbed by reporters and photographers.
He said he had been questioned four times by the FBI. “This was the fifth,” he said.
Jewell angrily insisted he was not responsible for the bombing.
“No, sir, I didn’t do it,” he said.
“I’m sure everyone who works in the area or who came by the area is being investigated. They’re being very thorough.”
His denial was echoed by his attorney, Watson Bryant, who told reporters outside the apartment that Jewell “was not a suspect, was not a subject and was not a target.”
“He had nothing whatsoever to do with planting this bomb. He had nothing to do with the bomb going off, except being a hero by finding the thing and getting people out of the way.
“You guys are really barking up the wrong tree,” he said.
Asked why the FBI questioned Jewell five times, Bryant said, “Because he was the closest one to the thing.”
An FBI spokesman in Atlanta, Paul Miller, would say only that investigators “have been questioning many individuals.” FBI officials were reviewing videotapes of the park and audio tape recordings of a 911 phone call warning of a bomb in the park shortly before the explosion.
A Washington law enforcement official said the tape of the 911 call and Jewell’s subsequent interview tapes would be analyzed and compared.
Authorities are armed with information from more than 900 calls to a hot line established after the bombing, with videotapes and snapshots taken by park visitors just before the blast and with film from park surveillance cameras.
Cast as a hero for his attentiveness in discovering a knapsack containing the crude pipe bomb that exploded in the park, Jewell became an instant celebrity after the bombing, giving numerous newspaper and television interviews, including an appearance Tuesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show.
The Journal-Constitution said he contacted the newspaper, seeking publicity for his actions.
In recounting his exploits, Jewell has said that he spotted a suspicious knapsack near the media tower damaged in the explosion. He said he reported his find to an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, then helped evacuate people from the area.
In an interview with the Journal-Constitution on Monday, Jewell said, “I’m feeling bad about the victims that did occur. If I had one wish, it would be that all people who were victims were not victims.”
“I’ve got a pit in my stomach because after everything law enforcement . . . and private security did to protect people, someone did this, not knowing how many would be hurt,” he told the newspaper. “It’s like heartburn. It will be there until that person’s caught.”
Jewell was working for a Los Angeles-based security firm, Anthony Davis & Associates, that was hired by AT&T to provide guards for the Olympic park. He had received bomb training while working as a deputy sheriff in northeastern Georgia, said the Journal-Constitution.
A deputy at the Habersham County Sheriff’s Department in Clarkesville, Ga., confirmed that Jewell had worked as a deputy there. He was employed “for about five years,” the deputy said.
After leaving the deputy sheriff’s job, Jewell worked for about a year as a security guard at Piedmont College in Demorest, Ga.
College President Ray Cleere said Tuesday he contacted investigators after seeing Jewell on television. Cleere said Jewell had been given the option of resigning or being fired because he was overly enthusiastic about his police duties and liked the “limelight.”
The Journal-Constitution said Jewell may fit a profile experts often cite for the lone bomber — a former police officer, military man or aspiring policeman who seeks to become a hero.
At a softball game Tuesday night, Olympics chief Billy Payne said, “We all want to see the person or people brought to justice as quickly as possible. I’m not saying that in my capacity as head of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, but as one of millions of Atlantans who feel we’ve been violated.”
Neighbors described Jewell as a quiet loner who moved in with his mother so he could work at the Olympics.
“I got the distinct impression that he was just here to visit. It wasn’t supposed to be permanent,” said Carol Piper, 45, who lives in an apartment building next door.
Piper said Mrs. Jewell “didn’t understand why he would want to get involved, that it would be simpler to just watch it on TV,” Piper said. “She wasn’t complaining or unhappy. She just didn’t think it made any sense.”
Perry Drake, another neighbor, said Jewell “was real quiet, very stand-offish, a person who was real difficult to get to know. I never saw him with any friends or any women.”
Carol Fisher, who manages the apartment complex where the Jewells live, said she had been to the apartment to visit Jewell’s mother. “She’s very distraught, very scared. She’s in there sobbing,” Fisher said.
She said the mother had lived in the complex for about 12 years. Robert is his mother’s only child, Fisher said.
The sensational news of authorities’ focus on Jewell’s possible involvement in the bombing came hours after officials opened Centennial Olympic Park to the public for the first time since the explosion.
“We’re here not to wallow in tragedy, but to celebrate a triumph — a triumph of human spirit,” former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young told thousands who packed an outdoor memorial service.
Crowds of children and seniors, Georgians and tourists from distant lands fanned out across the 21-acre park, turning it again into a crossroads of the world at the heart of Atlanta.
“THE GAMES WILL GO ON,” declared a hand-painted sign someone held aloft.
The games went on under ever-tighter security. In gray skies above, a police helicopter and blimp surveyed the scene. Down below, on the greens and brick walkways of the park, the police presence was double what it was last week.
