FEDERAL agents made an extensive search yesterday of the home of a security guard from Atlanta's bombed Olympic Centennial Park, who has gone from hero to suspect within 24 hours.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, backed up by a bomb sniffing dog, searched the apartment of Mr Richard Jewell (33) in a working class suburb for several hours.
Mr Jewell's lawyer, Mr Watson Bryant, told reporters his client now considered a suspect. "If they are searching the place then he is a suspect," he said.
Residents of the apartment block and nearby buildings, including a woman in a bathrobe with three small children, were evacuated by FBI men as the search began.
At one point most of the agents came out while the bomb dog checked the apartment.
Mr Jewell, a private security guard at Olympic Centennial Park where the blast killed two people and injured 110 during a packed rock concert early on Saturday, waited outside on an iron staircase.
He wore a white T shirt with the legend "Elevate and Decide in the Air" across the back.
Three vans from the FBI's "Evidence Response Team" later arrived and more agents carried equipment inside.
An FBI spokesman, Mr David, Tubbs, told reporters at Mr Jewell's home that neighbours and the media were being moved back for safety reasons.
Mr Jewell was hailed as a hero after he alerted police to a knap sack containing the pipe bomb, which was packed with screws and nails for shrapnel.
Mr Jewell says he is innocent.
Mr Tubbs told reporters as the search began that the issue of a search warrant "does not indicate in any way that Mr Jewell has been charged with a crime under our system of justice. Mr Jewell has not been placed under arrest.
Asked how Mr Jewell felt, Mr Bryant said: "He wants it over with. Search the place, look at it, find nothing, get out of my life."
Mr Tuhbs said the FBI had gone through a list of many potential suspects since the attack and eliminated them.
Mr Bryant said on Tuesday: "Richard had nothing whatsoever to do with planting that bomb. He had nothing to do with the bomb at all except being a hero by finding it, then getting people out of the way."
Mr Jewell's middle aged mother and a pet dog left the apartment shortly before the FBI agents arrived, returned and left again.
Residents evacuated from the area were taken in FBI vans to a nearby motel.
Before Tuesday, the FBI investigation had apparently focused on a white American male who made a warning call from a nearby public phone 13 minutes before the bomb detonated.
Investigators had also targeted right wing militia groups.
Mr Jewell, who newspapers say is a former police officer, worked at the park as a security man for the AT&T telecommunications company which has a pavilion in the entertainment area.