news

Driver Accused of Sewage Dump

By Waldo Jaquith
Aug.10.2004
Over the weekend, a boat giving a sightseeing cruise along the Chicago River received a nasty surprise: while motoring under a bridge, a long, black tour bus dumped its waste tanks into the river and onto the boat, to the tremendous disgust of the thoroughly-coated boat passengers. Jerry Fitzpatrick, the driver of Dave Matthews' tour bus, has been accused of being the dumper, but an unpleasant inspection of the bus' tank by Sgt. Paul Gardner of the Effingham Police Department revealed that it was nearly full, and so couldn't have been emptied the previous day. In addition, DMB has asserted that their buses were parked at the Peninsula Hotel at the time, and so it couldn't have been their bus. Of course, one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and so the national media has started to pick up on the incident. The Chicago Tribune has the full story.