Centennial Olympic Park bombing
| Centennial Olympic Park Bombing | |
|---|---|
Bomb fragment mark on Olympic Park sculpture
|
|
| Location | Atlanta, Georgia, United States |
| Coordinates | 33°45′38″N 84°23′33″W / 33.76065°N 84.392583°WCoordinates: 33°45′38″N 84°23′33″W / 33.76065°N 84.392583°W |
| Date | July 27, 1996 1:20 am (UTC-4) |
| Target | Centennial Olympic Park |
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Attack type
|
Bombing |
| Weapons | Pipe bomb |
| Deaths | 2 (1 from heart attack) |
|
Non-fatal injuries
|
111 |
| Perpetrators |
Eric Robert Rudolph Army of God |
The Centennial Olympic Park bombing was a domestic terrorist pipe bombing attack on the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 27 during the 1996 Summer Olympics. The blast directly killed 1 person and injured 111 others; another person later died of a heart attack. It was the first of four bombings committed by Eric Robert Rudolph. Security guard Richard Jewell discovered the bomb before detonation and cleared most of the spectators out of the park. Rudolph, a carpenter and handyman, had detonated three pipe bombs inside a U.S. military ALICE Pack. Motivated by what he considered to be the government's sanctioning of "abortion on demand," Rudolph wanted to force the cancellation of the Olympics.
After the bombings, Jewell was falsely implicated as a suspect by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the news media focused aggressively on him as the presumed culprit. However, in October 1996, Jewell was exonerated when the FBI declared that he was no longer a person of interest. Following three more bombings in 1997, Rudolph was identified by the FBI as the suspect. In 2003, Rudolph was arrested and tried before being convicted two years later. Rudolph was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for his crimes.
Centennial Olympic Park was designed as the "town square" of the Olympics, and thousands of spectators had gathered for a late concert by the band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. Sometime after midnight, Rudolph planted a green U.S. military ALICE pack (field pack) containing three pipe bombs surrounded by three-inch-long (7.6 cm) masonry nails, which caused most of the human injuries, underneath a bench near the base of a concert sound tower. He then left the area. The pack had a directed charge and could have done more damage but it was slightly moved at some point. It used a steel plate as a directional device. Investigators would later tie the Sandy Springs and Otherside bombs together with this first device because all were propelled by nitroglycerin dynamite, used an alarm clock and Rubbermaid containers, and contained steel plates.
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