Shawn Johnson's Stalker Goes To Jail
34-year-old caught outside ABC studios with shotgun
AFP/Getty Images
Fame would be great, but stalkers? No thanks.
Being famous sounds awesome. Usually, you're rich. Usually, you're popular. And usually, you get lots of free stuff, endorsements, and the like. Being famous would be pretty OK, for the most part.
But there are downsides. For example, crazy stalker types! Olympic gymnast and now-"Dancing With The Stars" contestant Shawn Johnson knows what we mean. Her stalker, 34-year-old Robert Ryan of Florida, was arrested when he tried to jump the ABC studio fences to get at Johnson over the weekend. Even scarier than the notion of grown man with an insane fixation on a young girl is this: O'Ryan had a loaded shotgun and a handgun in his car. Yikes.
O'Ryan is being held on $35,000 bail, and prosecutors want to increase the number to $220,000, presumably because they consider O'Ryan a serious risk to Johnson. We'd say that's reasonable. If O'Ryan is convicted, he could face to four years in prison. Prison is bad. Prison is no fun. And without getting on our anti-incarceration bandwagon, it sounds like Mr. O'Ryan needs some serious quiet time in a padded cell, with people that can help him figure out why he's so dangerously obsessed with a teenage Olympic gymnast.
In the meantime, Johnson has a dance competition to win. Can she bounce back from adversity and take home the most meaningless dance title in the long and illustrious histories of both dance and meaninglessness? Watch to find out! Or don't! It's "Dancing With The Stars." You probably have better things to do.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger who wishes he had a stalker. Not really. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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Posted Thursday, Jul 16, 2009 - 8:09 PM EST
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