For those, like me, who hadn’t heard of him before: Richard Jewel.
Richard Allensworth Jewell (born Richard White; December 17, 1962 – August 29, 2007) was an American security guard and law enforcement officer who alerted police during the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. He discovered a backpack containing three pipe bombs on the park grounds and helped evacuate the area before the bomb exploded, saving many people from injury or death. For months afterward he was suspected of planting the bomb, resulting in adverse publicity that “came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media”.
For months afterward he was suspected of planting the bomb, resulting in adverse publicity that “came to symbolize the excesses of law enforcement and the news media”.
And now, thirty years later, it has only gotten worse, of course, as the entire country has been sliding into its final acto
There’s a very decent 2019 movie about him I only just discovered recently:
