American Olympic swimmers Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger leave the police station at Rio International airport early Thursday Aug. 18, 2016. “Lochte is one of the best swimmers of all times”. Some of the swimmers pushed on the lavatory door and broke it.
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The swimmers eventually talk with security guards, who persuade them to walk to another section of the station.
The gas station manager then reportedly arrived, and asked Ryan and his friends “to pay for the broken door”.
The swimmers paid the manager an undisclosed amount and left, the report said.
Earlier on Thursday, the U.S. Olympic Committee said that Feigen, Bentz and Conger are cooperating with Brazilian officials.
Meanwhile, Bentz, Conger and Feigen are still in Brazil.
In a sport where reputations are made in split seconds, lost hours have thrown a blanket of intrigue over the standing of four top US swimmers.
Conger and Bentz, along with star USA swimmer Ryan Lochte and squad member James Feigen, said they were held up at gunpoint in the early hours of Sunday.
Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte said on Sunday that he and three other United States swimmers were robbed at about 4am in a taxi headed for the Olympic Village.
“We even have images of one of their backsides”.
Lochte did alter one detail, however.
On Sunday, Lochte had told NBC that the taxi he was travelling in with his three team mates was flagged down by robbers posing as police and they held a gun to his head during a robbery.
“And then the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, ‘Get down, ‘ and I put my hands up, I was like ‘whatever.’ He took our money, he took my wallet – he left my cellphone, he left my credentials”.
The U.S. Olympic Committee said police went to the athletes village to try to collect the passports, but the swim team had already moved out.
Lochte arrived in the United States Tuesday and didn’t seem too concerned about his teammates situation in Brazil. “And we’re lucky and happy to be safe”.
“We wouldn’t make this story up, we were victims”, Lochte said, according to Lauer. “I don’t know if there was a robbery or not”.
He said when he was interviewed by police about the incident that no one had suggested he needed to stay in Brazil, nor had any officials expressed doubts over his account of the robbery, NBC reported.
“The athletes lied to us about their story”, a top Rio police official told Reuters on Thursday, declining to be identified because the matter was still under investigation. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. He also initially claimed that his taxi had been pulled over only to later say the robbery had occurred at a gas station.
The charge does not carry any prison time, Veloso said.
“We stand by what he provided in that interview and signed off on”, Jeff Ostrow, his attorney, told CNN.
“Why would anybody fabricate anything?” But he said Lochte could not be held exclusively responsible for the incident.
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The news comes after Lochte, 32, hit the headlines when his dyed hair turned green as it reacted to chemicals in the Olympic pool.
