ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
THE STUNT DRIVER was arrested on a drunk-in-public charge in Roanoke, but `Kaptain Knievel' says he was sober.
Stunt driver Robbie Knievel prefers Pert shampoo and a hard toothbrush. He was innocently - and soberly - in search of those toiletries, he said, when he was arrested early Wednesday on a drunk-in-public charge, which led to cancellation of his weekend show in Salem.
The Roanoke police have a different version of events. They said the 34-year-old son of daredevil Evel Knievel was intoxicated and beating on a duplex door in Northwest Roanoke.
"I don't think it's any big deal," Knievel said at his hotel doorway Wednesday morning. "These [officers] can't prove I was drinking. I didn't have any drugs. I thought the cop was real rude, and that he judged me real quick."
Knievel was scheduled to take his death-defying motorcycle stunts to a back parking lot at the Salem Civic Center on Saturday. He planned to jump 25 cars - his first jump in Virginia and his eighth event this year. But several hours after his predawn arrest, Knievel's sponsors pulled out, canceling the show.
"It's unfortunate it happened," said Buzz Casey, program director at WROV-FM, which was sponsoring the event along with sister station WYYD-FM and Magic City Ford.
"We expected a great crowd on Saturday," Casey said. "You have to understand when you're a celebrity ... and paid well, you've got a responsibility to live up to."
The sponsors said they were paying Knievel's company $30,000.
"It's like why, what did I do?" Knievel said of the cancellation. "I didn't get arrested for drunk driving. I just can't believe they're doing this. It's the '90s now. Boy, it's tough."
Knievel said he realized about 1 a.m. Wednesday that he had left his shaving kit at home in Washington state and remembered that he had a 6 a.m. interview at WYYD-FM in Lynchburg.
So he got into his van to find a 24-hour drugstore. As he pulled out of the Holiday Inn-Civic Center in Roanoke, he said, he asked a man at a nearby pay phone where he could find one.
The man, who Knievel said identified himself only as "John," offered to drive him to the store. They ended up in the 1800 block of Moorman Avenue Northwest, where the man stopped to go see his sister, Knievel said.
When the man did not return, Knievel said, he went looking for him.
"I was lost," Knievel said.
About 2 a.m. he knocked at the door of a duplex he thought he'd seen "John" enter. The man who answered did not know any "John," Knievel said.
Knievel left and then returned. When he began knocking at the door again, a resident at the home called police. When officers arrived, Knievel said, they accused him of smelling of alcohol.
Knievel denies he was drunk, saying that he'd had just three glasses of white wine at dinner Tuesday.
An officer also accused him of being in the area to buy drugs, he said.
"If you want to be such a nerd, just arrest me," Knievel said he told the officer. "Then he threw me in the car and handcuffed me. ... This [officer] is trying to tell me I'm up there smoking crack. I'm like, `What do you mean?' I've never smoked crack."
At the jail, Knievel said, the officers questioned him about the $1,600 he was carrying. Knievel said he usually carries at least $2,000 during his tours.
He then bet the officers $100 that he could pass a breath test. The officers didn't take the gamble, he said.
Because Knievel was in a van lent to him by Magic City Ford, word of his arrest traveled quickly. A half-hour after he was taken into custody, police called Charlie Robertson, president of the Williamson Road car dealership.
"We just don't want to be associated with that," Robertson said. "If it hadn't gotten out, and been kept secret, we probably would have went along with it. It's just a sad situation."
Knievel is due in court Nov. 1, unless he decides to pay the $57 fine for the misdemeanor charge. But he said there is no proof he was drunk, so he is thinking about fighting it. And he was still trying to contact his local promoter George Davis on Wednesday night about continuing with his jump. It was still unclear whether that would happen.
"I'm here to perform," he said. "I always do my job. I'm going to let a lot of kids down."
Knievel, who is billed as the "King of Media," denied that the arrest was a publicity stunt. But it certainly added to his recent media exposure.
By lunchtime Wednesday, Knievel was feeling tired but still, well, a bit daring.
"I wish they'd line up 25 police cars," he said. "I'd jump them and make a poster out of it. It'd say, `Kaptain Knievel. Above the law.'''
Anyone with advance tickets can get a refund by returning them to the place of purchase.
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Robbie Knievel, in his hotel room,by CNBclaims he is innocent, and says he offered to bet police $100 he
would pass a breath test. color.