Richard Jewell was an ordinary person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he was 33 years old, and working as a security guard, he was accused of a crime that changed his life forever. Jewell lived with his mother in 1996 when the Olympics was in Atlanta. As he was walking through the Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996 Jewell saw a green backpack under the light and sound tower. He did the right thing and called the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to check out what was in the backpack. Before the GBI got to the scene, the backpack exploded because it had a pipe bomb inside. It was terrible that two people died, but if would have been a lot worse if Jewell did not help to save people. What happened next is not what everyone would expect would happen. The Olympics was supposed to be a safe place and the FBI was under pressure after 9/11 to show that America was a safe place. They wanted to find out who put the bomb in the back pack so they did not do anything else. The police and news media were quick to accuse Jewell of planting the bomb at the Olympics. Just before the bomb exploded there was a 911 call made from a phone booth saying, "There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have …show more content…
The police search his mother's apartment and found no bombs. Jewell also passed a polygraph test and it was found out that he was in a different area when the bomber placed the 9/11 call. Finally the FBI said that he did not do the bombing and three months later a letter was sent to Jewell saying that he was not the bomber. Still there were a lot of people who believed that he was the bomber. It took six years to catch the bomber who was Eric Rudolph a man who was in the US Army working with bombs. Rudolph was sentenced to four life sentences, but no one remembers his name only Jewell's