Danny Harris
Danny Lee Harris (born
September 7,
1965 in
Torrance, CA) is a former
American 400mH runner who won silver medals at the
1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the
1987 World Championships in Rome. Harris' greatest moment came at a meeting in Madrid in 1987 where he beat
Edwin Moses who had been undefeated since 1976. Later in the same year Harris came very close to defeating Moses again in a dramatic final at the World Championships. In the end Moses defended his title by 2/100 of a second. Harris did not take part in the
1988 Olympics after finishing fifth at the 1988 US trials in Indianapolis. Shortly afterwards he began using cocaine; In 1992 he tested positive and was temporarily banned. Four years later he tested positive for cocaine again, and the ban was made permanent.
On Nov. 10, 2004, while employed as a personal trainer and living voluntarily at the CLARE foundation (a
sober-living facility in
Santa Monica, California), Harris was arrested for the kidnapping and robbery of a 75-year-old woman, and held on a $1.44 millon bail. Police hounds had tracked an article of clothing left at the crime scene to the foundation, and three witnesses had identified him in a photographic
lineup.
DNA evidence left at the scene, however, matched only Alonzo Taylor, a convicted burglar who was already in custody for an unrelated crime. Harris remained jailed while prosecutors attempted unsuccessfully to find links between the two. Two days after an in-person lineup resulted in witnesses identifying only Taylor, the charges were dismissed, with an apology from the presiding judge over his two-month stay in a
Los Angeles County jail.
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USA Track & Field Bio*
Des Moines Register article on kidnapping charges
