Gabe Jennings Wows Crowd, Gets Arrested After Performance at Oregon Retirement Community
Gabe Jennings seen here warming up for his performance Monday night at the Sheldon Park Assisted Living Center in Eugene.
Former USA 1500 meter Olympian Gabe Jennings left his audience riveted then left the stage in handcuffs after a controversial performance Monday night at the Sheldon Park Assisted Living Center in Eugene.
“Most of the Sheldon Park residents were alive and functioning during the 1960s and almost everyone we interviewed said they had not seen a musical act as bizarrely entertaining as they bore witness to tonight,” Police Chief Montgomery Boneville said. “Taking into account the numerous health problems of his audience and general public standards of decency, Mr. Jennings could be facing some serious time.”
Noting his musical and dance resume, the Oregon Track Club tabbed Jennings to meet with the city’s elderly populace as part of the team’s Community Service week. Though just scheduled to attend the center’s half-hour weekly dance and meet and greet, Jennings went on stage for more than two hours, keeping over 75 percent of the audience awake, according to on-site nursing staff. Using his miler’s gracefulness and marathoner’s endurance, Jennings displayed an array of dance moves not seen since well before his birth date. Several times during his act, Jennings even went into his Carrottop-like bag of tricks, including whipping out a miniature didgeridoo stolen from native aborigines at the 2000 Olympic Games.
According to several residents who had forgotten their names, the performance took a turn for the daring near the end, when Mr. Jennings decided to disrobe and play his final two songs with bongos covering his private parts. The residents responded with muffled shrieks resembling the sounds made by zombies – traditionally known as their highest form of applause. One woman, a widower in her early 90s even fainted and had to be revived. “It was like Weekend at Bernie’s,” one staff member said. “One minute she’s dead, the next minute she’s dancing to the pulse of the drums. In all my life, I’ve never seen something like that.”
Local police did not share the same wonderment, immediately placing Jennings under arrest at the end of his performance. According to one officer who requested anonymity, the former Stanford Cardinal will be arraigned sometime next though the police have yet to finalize the charges.“District Attorney Higgins hasn’t decided between attempted murder of the elderly, indecent exposure or just plain cruel and unusual punishment.”