Authorities in the South Carolina county where Michael Phelps was photographed smoking from a MARIJUANA PIPE have been arresting people as they seek to make a case against the superstar swimmer, lawyers for two arrested people said Thursday. Attorneys Joseph McCulloch and Dick Harpootlian told The Associated Press they each represent a client charged with possession of marijuana who were questioned about the party Phelps attended near the University of South Carolina campus in November.The lawyers said the two clients were renters at the house where the party apparently took place. Harpootlian said his client was at the party, but didn’t see Phelps smoke marijuana, while McCulloch said his client wasn’t there. The two have since moved and were arrested after police executed a search warrant at their new home and accused them of having a small amount of marijuana there. “After they arrested him, they didn’t ask him, ‘Where did you get the marijuana?’ or ‘Who sold it to you?’ Almost all the questions they asked him were about Michael Phelps,” Harpootlian said.
The lawyers would not name their clients, who each face up to 30 days in jail and a $200 fine if convicted on the pending charges. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department would not comment on the lawyers’ remarks. “As soon as we’re ready to release information on this case we will and we’re still in the middle of this investigation,” said Lt. Chris Cowan.
After the photo was published Feb. 1, Sheriff Leon Lott said his office would investigate and possibly charge Phelps, though officials have not specified what the offense might be. Phelps, 23, and his representatives have not disputed the photo’s accuracy. Phelps has issued a public apology, acknowledging “regrettable” behavior and “bad judgment” after the photo appeared. USA Swimming has suspended Phelps for three months and the Kellogg Co. has cut ties with him, although other sponsors are sticking with the swimmer.
McCulloch, who said his client was out of town at the time, doubted that anything his client told authorities would assist them in the case against Phelps. “Our clients answered questions but I don’t know that their information would be helpful to law enforcement,” McCulloch said. “It seems to me that Richland County has a host of its own crime problems much more serious than a kid featured in a photograph with a MARIJUANA BONG in his hand.” Lott has said Phelps should not get a break because of his fame. Harpootlian said that he believes police are being overzealous. “I find it amazing the justification is they don’t want to treat him any differently just because he is a celebrity, and he is being treated far differently than any other Joe Blow who might have smoked marijuana four or five months ago.”
Under South Carolina law, possession of one ounce or less of marijuana is a misdemeanor that carries a fine up to $200 and 30 days in jail for the first offense. Possession of drug paraphernalia is a $500 fine. Columbia television station WIS-TV was first to report earlier this week that eight arrests related to the party had been made, but did not name a source. McCulloch said college students and lawyers have told him that about eight arrests have been made.
Lott has made fighting drug crimes a central plank of his career. He rose from patrol officer to captain of the narcotics division in the early 1990s. He was first elected sheriff in 1996 and has held the post since.
In related news, legions of marijuana advocates are urging a boycott of products made by Kellogg Co. after it cut ties with Olympic hero Michael Phelps because he was photographed using a bong.
The leader of the Marijuana Policy Project called the cereal maker's action "hypocritical and disgusting," and said he'd never seen his membership so angry, with more than 2,300 signing an online petition.
"Kellogg's had no problem signing up Phelps when he had a conviction for drunk driving, an illegal act that could have killed someone," said Rob Kampia, the group's executive director. To drop him for "choosing to relax" with a substance the group considers safer than beer "is an outrage," Kampia said. There was no immediate response from Kellogg.
Last week, the company announced Phelps' conduct was "not consistent with the image of Kellogg." The swimmer has been appearing on Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes boxes since September.
It is amazing to see how a small incident such as smoking a bong can drastically effect the career of a "Superstar" In another article, Michael Phelps has been reported as saying he is considering ending his career as a professional swimmer.
Michael Phelps, the US swim star who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, will decide in the next two months whether or not he will compete at the 2012 London Olympics. Phelps, suspended for three months by USA Swimming after a picture of him with a marijuana pipe was published by a British newspaper last week, will make his decision before climbing back into the pool for his next competitive race. "It will take a few months," Phelps told the Baltimore Sun. "I'll give it 30 or 60 days. I think it will be better. "I'm already happier now than I was, just having some part of my life back to normal, being able to swim again, having fun, joking around."Phelps, 23, is pondering his future after a media frenzy that followed the publication of the photograph from a party in South Carolina, one that cost him a sponsorship from cereal-maker Kellogg, whose deal expires at month's end. Phelps has been working out here in his hometown, where children clamor for his autograph and to have pictures taken with him, even after the uproar and the sleepless nights that followed. "I'm not feeling too good physically, but I'm actually able to sleep now. I had a real hard time sleeping over the last two weeks or so," Phelps said. "Just swimming and thinking about everything going on. Everything is back to what I call normal, I guess."
Whether Phelps wants to swim at an Olympics in the nation where his troubling photo was published is uncertain, but the swim star said he has been able to laugh at being the butt of jokes over the matter. "Unemployment is high. Foreclosures are high. Michael Phelps is high," joked comedian David Letterman, who also spoke of a day being 23 and cloudy before saying, "No, wait, that's Michael Phelps."
Phelps went from hosting the season opener of Saturday Night Live to being a punch-line for the famed US sketch comedy television show, which took issue with Kellogg dropping Phelps and the person who took the photograph. "If you're at a party and you see Michael Phelps smoking a bong and your first thought isn't 'Wow, I get to party with Michael Phelps' and instead you take a picture and sell it to a tabloid, you should take a long, hard look in the mirror," cast member Seth Meyers said during the Phelps-related segment.
"I saw the SNL skit and I was just dying. We definitely got a huge kick out of it," Phelps said. "My mom saw it, my sisters saw it, and everyone was e-mailing each other and sending each other the link, so it was pretty good."
Related links:
AMANDA BEARD COMMENTS ON MICHAEL PHELPS BONG SMOKING INCIDENT
MICHAEL PHELPS - Toking in the Boys Room
Whistler RCMP Sgt. Steve Wright said he has no further details of the nature of the injuries, other than to say they are believed to be non-life threatening. Wright said the evacuation of skiers and boarders trapped on Blackcomb Mountain's main gondola was complete just after 6 p.m. He credited the efforts of firefighters, who rescued skiers from the gondolas by extending ladders up to gondola doors.
Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, one of the towers holding up the Excalibur Gondola partially collapsed. There was a delay before anyone could be rescued as rescue workers had to secure the fallen tower, said Doug Forseth, a spokesman with Whistler Blackcomb. The accident happened when the top half of tower number four became separated from the base, he said. The connection came lose and Forseth said, no one yet knows why.
None of the gondola cars came off the cable and it is not known if any of the cars hit the ground. One of the cars came to rest on a bus shelter and fire officials using a truck and ladder began unloading the passengers from that one first. In all, 30 cars on the lower base of the gondola are stranded. They hold a maximum of eight passengers each, but were not full, officials said.
The upper loop of the gondola operates seperately and passengers on that loop were able to unload as usual.
Jennifer Miller, a reporter for the Whistler Question who is at the scene, said one of the towers supporting the cable for Excalibur gondola on Blackcomb has collapsed. One of the cars is "hanging over Fitzsimmons Creek," she said. "There are many fire trucks and ambulances at the scene, but so far, there is no indication anyone has been hurt" she said.
Many other skiiers are trapped inside cars and they too will have to be manually rescued. The injuries reported were "minor," said Michelle Leroux, spokeswoman for Dopelmayr/Garaventra Group, the German company that built the Excalibur. Leroux said she was not aware of any broken bones or other serious injuries. Leroux said the problem with the tower affected the gondola cars, which are connected to a cable that runs from tower to tower. None of the gondola cars fell, she said. In some places the cable sagged low enough that firefighters could reach the people trapped inside using extension ladders on top of the fire trucks. In other cases, people had to be rescued from gondola cars still suspended high above the ground. Leroux could not explain the details of those evauation efforts.
Eighty per cent of the high speed chairs and Gondolas on Whistler and Blackcomb have been designed and built by Doppelmayr, including the new Peak-to-Peak from the tips of Whislter to Blackcomb. Snowboarder Logan Swayze entered a gondola car at 2:15 p.m. By the time his car, which he shared with two others, got to the top half of the run, the car stopped abruptly, he said. 'We didn't think anything of it at first. It stops all the time," Swayze said. "But the time drew on." Only after he made a phone call to a friend did he learn that a tower had collapsed and all mountain visitors were being evacuated from the lifts and gondola cars. After an hour's wait, Swayze's car was moved slowly to the base. That's when he saw the mayhem of fire and ambulance crews, stretching ladders to the cars to bring skiers to the ground. "We saw a lift tower had broken in half and the gondola was hanging. There were still people in the bottom half" of the gondola, he said.
A bartender at the Longhorn Saloon and Grill said other staff in the infamous Whistler pub saw a gondola car flip upsidedown, and then she witnessed it swinging wildly from side to side for quite some time. There did not appear to be anyone inside the car, although she did hear ambulance sirens responding to the scene. The accident appears to have happened right near the bottom of the Blackcomb gondola, at the centre of bustling Whistler village.
At the Garibaldi Lift Company, another bar beside the Blackcomb Gondola, a waitress said the main cable was sagging and the gondola cars -- which are usually suspended high in the sky -- were all hanging low to the ground at 3 p.m. She could see no evidence of injuries. However, she said people inside the packed bar -- popular with the apres-ski crowd -- were scared.
Fiona Famulak, president of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce, said at 3:30 p.m. that she had few details except that the accident was on the Excalibur Gondola. The Excalibur was installed at Whistler/Blackcomb in 1994, and is a long gondola built in two stages. The short stage runs from Whistler village to the Base 2 station on Blackcomb Mountain, while the second stage runs to the top of Blackcomb. The accident occurred on the shorter first stage, close to Whistler Village. Leroux said she was not aware of any accidents on the gondola in its 14 year history in Whistler. The Excalibur is tested by the B.C. Safety Authority every year and passed its most recent test this fall, Leroux said.
The Excalibur can hold eight people per car, is 2,204 metres long and at its highest is 367 metres tall, according to the Whistler/Blackcomb Web site. This is one of the resort's veteran gondolas. It is a different facility from the new Peak-to-Peak gondola which opened earlier this month to connect Whistler and Blackcomb from the top of the two mountains. The representative for Jim Godfrey, the executive director for the 2010 Winter Games in Whistler, wouldn't discuss the incident, and said that any incident on Blackcomb Mountain would be dealt with by the company itself.
In 2002, a five-year-old girl fell about 35 feet from the Creekside Gondola on Whistler Mountain when a latch malfunctioned and the car door opened. Soft snow cushioned the girl's fall, and she survived. The gondola was installed in 1996 to replace the Quicksilver Express, after an accident in December, 1995, in which two people died and eight others were injured. In that tragic accident four chairs fell four storeys to the ground.
Trevor MacDonald, 25, of Vancouver, died; Vancouver lawyer James Roche, 50, died later; and Mike Negraeff, a medical intern from Saskatchewan, was left a paraplegic. A damning report by the B.C. coroner's service said the Quicksilver accident could have been prevented, detailing a litany of failures by the lift manufacturer, the ski resort and government regulators to correct flaws in the Quicksilver Express.
B.C.'s chief inspector of ski-lifts told The Vancouver Sun following the 1996 accident that the fatal incident was not an isolated one, since about 140 ski-lift reports of injuries, death or major equipment failures were made to provincial safety inspectors in the previous two winters. More recently, in June of this year, a braking system on North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain gondola triggered accidentally, trapping about 140 people inside for nearly an hour. In 1988, six people were injured when a gondola fell five metres to the ground at Sunshine Village ski resort near Banff in the Rocky Mountains.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sgt. Steve Wright says the gondolas that police were most concerned about were safely evacuated.
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