There, according to Charleston Post & Courier beat writer Travis Haney (and others), stands the nation's No. 1 high school prospect, South Carolina-bound defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, being frisked by police early this morning in the parking lot of a Columbia, S.C., bar, the Salty Nut. Why, or whether anything came of the encounter, is even less clear than the cell phone camera used to snap it.
Haney wrote this morning that he was first alerted via Twitter that Clowney, 18, was at the bar and had received a standing ovation from patrons a little before 2 a.m. Shortly after, Haney described the scene from witnesses after the grainy pic above — originally posted to Twitter by a South Carolina student with the caption "Cola cops suck arresting clowney," and deleted within a few hours — started to make the rounds:
A witness at the scene said Clowney was not detained and the cause of the search wasn't immediately discernible. I'll check with Columbia P.D. once I get going in the morning. It could take it a little while to get a report filed and available - if there's one at all.
Witnesses said college kids, aware of who the subject of the incident was, were booing and becoming upset. I've already had some students upset with me because I retweeted the pic.
South Carolina's Rivals' site echoed the particulars — it's Clowney, he was frisked between the Salty Nut and another bar (Pavlov's), there had been assorted tweets announcing the presence of Clowney and high school teammate Gerald Dixon (another future Gamecock) in the Five Points area before the pat-down — and added that there are no classes today at South Pointe High due to a furlough day. That's a relevant detail, considering both Clowney and Dixon are considered on the fence academically: At least they weren't in college bars at 2 a.m. on a school night, right?
Again, initial reports are that Clowney was not arrested or detained; if the surrounding crowd was booing the cops, it's possible he was stopped for no reason other than being a high-profile 18-year-old out at 2 a.m. on a school night. (As one early message board poster put it, "What Carolina student HASN'T been detained [by] CPD in the parking lot between Pavlov's and Salty Nut?") If this is a story beyond the power of the digital revolution —�you're always on camera, kids —�we won't know until later today at the earliest. But this is generally not how you'd like your star recruit to be introduced to the campus community.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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