American Olympians Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, and James Feigen – the three swimmers e with Ryan Lochte on the night he said he was robbed at gunpoint – were all reportedly stopped as they attempted to leave Rio on Wednesday.
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Lochte said he had a gun put to his forehead in the robbery, when the swimmers’ taxi was pulled over by bandits who forced them to lie on the ground while they searched their pockets for money and jewelry.
Steve Lochte told The Associated Press by phone from his Florida home that his son called him Tuesday after arriving in the U.S. The 32-year-old swimmer was going to pick up his auto and buy a new wallet to replace the one that he said was stolen from him in the robbery. Teammate James Feigen was also stopped from flying home to the USA, a police source said.
“The swim team moved out of the village after their competition ended, so we were not able to make the athletes available”, Reuters reported Patrick Sandusky as saying.
After checks at Rio’s worldwide airport, police sources said they believed Lochte had already left Brazil where he won a relay gold medal in the Olympic swimming competition that ended on Saturday.
It appears that, unless Lochte is egregiously lying for reasons unknown about the robbery, Brazil is now in meltdown mode, desperate to prove that it is a “safe” country for olympics, and in order to prove it, it is willing to go as far as to arrest a United States national icon, an arrest however which may not happen.
Rio police commonly struggle to obtain information while investigating street crimes in Brazil as they encounter dozens of robberies a day in the violence-ridden city and lack the resources to get to the bottom of every case. To add to all the mess, there have been multiple reports of athletes and officials being robbed by police impersonators.
The elder Lochte said his son’s Olympic credential and cell phone weren’t taken during the incident early Sunday morning, Rio time. “They arrived with their psychological and physical integrity unperturbed”, she said.
Lochte’s attorney, Jeff Ostrow, has said there is no question the robbery happened.
Such a trip during early morning hours would take 30 to 40 minutes.
But a close viewing of the video shows that Lochte and his friends were wearing their watches when they returned – and that they put their cellphones and other belongings into baskets at the security gate.
Feigen, who was also part of the gold-medal team in that race, told the San Antonio Express-News that he was still in Brazil, but gave no more details.
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Word of the robbery initially created confusion between Olympic and U.S. officials.
