Army Veteran Horrified By Media Account of Dark Day

Army vet seeks to regain what was lost at Waffle House counter
Online Athens
By JOE JOHNSON
Sunday, March 13, 2016

Worthington was stung by the media’s descriptions of his appearance. “That bothers me because I’m not a man in a clown suit or a man dressed as a clown. Damn it, I am a clown,” he said. “I’d like it if people didn’t take that away from me.”

In his 25 years, Jacob Worthington has already seen and done plenty in his life.

He’s a U.S. Army combat veteran who has traveled the world working to help others. He’s a magician, who has an affinity for juggling and card tricks, seeking to entertain the crowd. He’s a classically-trained chef.

But earlier this month Worthington, whose struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder is only being compounded by drug and alcohol abuse, became fodder for the Internet.

“I am a proud man who has lived an amazing life that could fill several books and I’m only 25,” Worthington said. “To be reduced to a meth clown in a single day when I don’t even know what meth looks like is horrific.”

Worthington was arrested the morning of March 1 after a Waffle House waitress claimed she saw him smoking methamphetamine at the restaurant’s counter before locking himself in the bathroom. Earlier that night Worthington was entertaining people in downtown Athens in his clown persona and was still in costume when he walked into the restaurant on West Clayton Street.

During his deployment to Afghanistan, Worthington said he was assigned to a forward operating base as a member of a tactical psychological operations team accompanying special operations and conventional forces on missions.

“After a year of seeing things that no one should ever see I returned home the one needing help,” he said.
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