Don’t know where the incident occurred but that’s Calhouns on the River on Neyland Dr.
Yes, that’s definitely Calhoun’s deck. They don’t open until 11am and he drowned shortly before they opened, so I guess the “concerned citizens” in the news story weren’t Calhoun’s patrons.
From the story:
The officers called the Knoxville Fire Department for rescue and instructed him to swim to shore. The lawsuit states that one of the cops scoffed at the idea that Clabo was drowning.
The suit alleges that the officers just stood by as Clabo struggled to stay above water and screamed for help. It also claims that police warned concerned residents to stay away and not help the drowning man because they could get caught in the vines as well.
By 10:27 a.m., Clabo’s head vanished underwater, with the cops allegedly only commenting on it while not knowing what to do.
“[The officers] acted with no urgency whatsoever throughout the incident to respond to the life-or-death situation,” the lawsuit reads.
When the rescue boat arrived three minutes later, officials combed the area and found the man’s body tangled in vines mere inches below the surface.”
Why did they bother some guy walking along a railroad track? Is that illegal? We got homeless junkies wandering all over Knoxville these days even in the “good” parts out west and the cops seem to ignore them.
A few things seem “off” about this story, but we’re only hearing the lawyer’s version here, so there’s a bunch we don’t know. One thing, though, is Knoxville cops aren’t what they used to be years ago. Times change, often not for the better.