ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 7, 1996 TAG: 9612090046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
IF PROSECUTORS had pushed for a drunk-in-public conviction, Robbie Knievel would have been in court Friday to "duke it out," his attorney said.
Daredevil Robbie Knievel did not attempt any legal stunts Friday, allowing his lawyer to enter a no-contest plea to a misdemeanor charge that wiped out his plans to jump 25 cars with his motorcycle in Salem earlier this year.
Knievel, who was attending a trade show in Las Vegas Friday, was convicted in his absence of disorderly conduct and fined $50 by Roanoke General District Judge Julian Raney.
On Oct. 2, three days before his scheduled show at the Salem Civic Center, Knievel was charged with being drunk in public after police found him knocking on the door of a Northwest Roanoke home at 2 a.m. The show was canceled as a result.
Knievel - who has said he was only in search of an all-night drugstore to buy shaving supplies - maintains that he was sober.
"He feels adamantly that he was absolutely not drunk, intoxicated or impaired in any manner," Knievel's attorney, Bettina Altizer of Roanoke, said after Friday's brief hearing.
If prosecutors had pushed for a drunk-in-public conviction, Knievel would have been in court Friday to "duke it out," Altizer said. Instead, the stunt driver accepted an agreement to amend the charge to disorderly conduct.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Melvin Hill did not object to the agreement, which actually convicted Knievel of a more serious misdemeanor so that he could avoid the stigma of a public drunkenness charge.
"Whether you buy his story or not, he was causing a disturbance in the area," Hill said.
Knievel, who is from Washington state, said earlier that he got lost in Roanoke while looking for a drugstore. He said a man agreed to drive him to a store, but then left him stranded on Moorman Avenue Northwest.
After Knievel twice knocked on the door of a home he thought he had seen the man go into, the occupants of the home called police.
The sponsors of the show pulled out after learning of Knievel's arrest. And his promoter had the stunt driver's motorcycles, ramps and other equipment seized as part of a lawsuit over the canceled show. That suit is pending in Rockbridge County Circuit Court.
Knievel, the 34-year-old son of daredevil Evel Knievel, still hopes to return to Roanoke sometime to make good on his promise to jump 25 cars in the parking lot of the Salem Civic Center, Altizer said.
"I think the people who have really lost in this whole thing are his fans," she said, "and he really cares about his fans."
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB