Looking back at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and Richard Jewell

The 2024 Summer Olympics are taking place in Paris, as the world prepares to celebrate the world’s greatest athletes. But nearly 30 years ago, the world was shocked when a bomb killed two people and injured more than 100 others at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.

The infamous attack sparked a years-long hunt for a suspect, during which authorities falsely named Richard Jewell as the suspect before eventually clearing him of any wrongdoing. The real culprit would not be caught until years later.

Before Jewell was named a person of interest, however, he was hailed as a hero. Jewell was working as a security guard at the 1996 Olympics when he noticed a green bag sitting under a bench at Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta just before 1 a.m. on July 27, PEOPLE reported.

After Jewell and a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent unsuccessfully attempted to locate the package’s owner, the agent flagged him as suspicious and a perimeter was created.

A minute later, a man called 911, saying a bomb had been planted in the park and warning, “You have 30 minutes.” But the homemade device was mistimed and the bomb exploded at 1:20 a.m., just minutes after the evacuation began and before many people had been able to leave.

Two people were killed in the blast. Alice Hawthorne, 44, was in the park with her daughter at the time and was killed by shrapnel. Her 14-year-old daughter, Fallon, survived.

Melih Uzunyol, a 40-year-old Turkish cameraman and father of two, died of a heart attack, “precipitated” by the attack, authorities said, as he rushed to take photos of the scene, PEOPLE reported.

Another 111 people were injured, some with head and chest injuries. Jewell was not seriously injured.

Soon afterward, Jewell was applauded for discovering the bomb and helping to save lives. But the attention would soon fade.

Unbeknownst to Jewell, less than 24 hours after the bombing, the police chief at Piedmont College, where the security guard previously worked, had informed the FBI that Jewell had books on bomb-making. Authorities then began investigating Jewell.

On July 30, Jewell was interviewed by Katie Couric and he was still considered a hero. But later that day, an article appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution It changed everything.

Jewell’s name had been leaked to a reporter, who wrote that the FBI was investigating him and that he fit the profile of the suicide bomber they had developed.

Although he was never arrested, Jewell was the subject of an intense media storm. After nearly three months, Jewell was finally exonerated when federal authorities declared he was no longer a person of interest.

While Jewell filed several defamation lawsuits, the FBI had difficulty identifying the real suspect.

Ultimately, authorities targeted Eric Rudolph, an anti-government terrorist who planted three more bombs after the one at Olympic Park, injuring several other people and killing a police officer, according to the FBI.

Rudolph was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1998 and remained at large for five years.

According to the FBI, Rudolph was arrested while rummaging through a trash can in rural North Carolina in 2003. Two years later, he eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts related to the four attacks and was sentenced to multiple life sentences.

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Jewell died in 2007. His ordeal was adapted into a film in 2019. Richard Jewell, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Paul Walter Hauser in the title role. The film itself was not without controversy, due to its portrayal of journalist Kathy Scruggs, who co-wrote the original article naming Jewell as a person of interest.

In his 1996 interview with Couric, before he was publicly labeled a suspect, Jewell said he was simply trying to do the right thing.

“I feel like I was a person who did the job I was supposed to do,” he said. “I was in the right place at the right time and I used my training the way I was taught.”