ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607300063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: ERIC SHARP DETROIT FREE PRESS
NOTE: Below
Something was going on. But the real police didn't seem worried after a TV photo crew found a suspicious package. So Ben Kozinn, a 19-year-old rent-a-cop, relaxed and enjoyed the vibes from the happy throng jamming to the thundering sounds of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.
Then the music was drowned out by an explosion, and Kozinn saw the female police officer he had been joking with all night drop to the ground 50 feet away at Centennial Olympic Park.
The bomb went off at 1:25 a.m. Saturday during a stage show when the park, the central gathering and partying place for Olympic fans, looked like New Orleans on the last night of Mardi Gras.
Let the Emory University business major from Allentown, Pa., tell the rest of the story in his own words:
``She was about halfway between me and the bomb [voice breaking]. As soon as it blew up, I saw her fall. I just stood there staring at her and the big hole it left in the ground. I heard a cop scream, `There's another bomb.' [There wasn't.] I just turned and walked up the stairs. I was so close. I still haven't figured why I wasn't killed.
[The identity and condition of the policewoman were not known late Saturday.]
``I still wonder if maybe not so many people would have been killed and hurt if the police had maybe, you know ... seemed more concerned and pushed those people back another 75, 100 yards.
``Some guys in those vests had noticed the thing [a knapsack with a pipe bomb inside] and were filming it. They were the ones who notified police. That's why I thought there was no way this could be a bomb threat. I thought the commotion was a confrontation between those photographers and police. They don't always like each other. One idiot was trying to go back to get more pictures. He was only 10 feet away from it, but they made him get out.
``I'd say there was five minutes between the time they found the package and the time the thing went off. That's why I didn't think it was a bomb. At first they only had five or six officers trying to move all those people. They didn't move very far, maybe 50 feet, then they all just stood there.
``More officers came in, and they cleared one side out better. There was a kind of barrier fence of benches there so they could keep the crowds back. But on the other side, there wasn't any barrier and people were a lot closer.
``I looked up and saw all those people standing only 50 to 150 feet from whatever was happening and I thought, `It can't be a real threat or they'd be moving them.' But in the area to the right as you're looking at the stage, I don't think they cleared everyone out of there. That's why so many people got hurt. The police were saying, `You have to move' and `Come on! Get out of here!' There was no sense of a threat - it was more a sense of unknowing.
``I've been in Israel during bomb threats. They take them a lot more seriously. They move everyone 150 yards back. We once saw them clear out an entire dock area. If people refused, the security forces just removed them. This is the disappointing thing about the whole mess. I've seen it done, and I know how it should be done. They should have been yelling for people to leave.
[The bomb was left at the base of a five-story tower that housed lighting and sound equipment for the stage shows. Kozinn was 100 feet away to the right of the stage, where his job was to keep the uninvited out of the AT&T pavilion's VIP terrace.]
``When it went off, it was loud, real loud. In the pavilion 20 feet behind me, all the glass was blown out of the windows. The policewoman was one of the closest people to it - right in line with all the shrapnel. I was leaning on a railing beyond and above her.
``I didn't even know I'd been hit. I didn't realize I was holding my arm. Some woman saw the blood, and she said I'd better go get it treated. It was just a little cut from a piece of wood that hit me. It wasn't bad, so I just cleaned it up myself.
``After the explosion, cops and security guys and ambulances just poured in. I looked over to the left and people were down everywhere, right where they had allowed all those people to stand. It looked like most of them had been hit by pieces of debris, but some of them weren't moving. It was awful.
``AT&T pays me $12 an hour, and it seemed like a lot for standing around scratching my behind most of the time. But now I realize that I'm security, and there's a risk with it. Some nut might decide to make you a target.
``I don't know if I'll go back to work - maybe in a couple of days. I stayed with friends last night because I didn't want to be alone. I had so many emotions - I was hyper, I was scared, I was angry.
``I figure it this way - somebody gave me a second chance.''
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. A priest rushes into Grady Memorial Hospital inby CNBAtlanta after the explosion in Centennial Olympic Park early
Saturday morning. color. Graphic: Chart by AP. color.