While Veloso said potential charges could include false communication of a crime and damaging private assets they were unlikely because the petrol station has been reimbursed for the damage and the owner was not pressing charges. Lochte is already back on United States soil and has not responded to subsequent allegations that they made up the story. Two of the team members, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, reportedly told police that Lochte fabricated the robbery story. “It sounds like people assume we’re guilty”, the swimmer said to the San Antonio Express News on August 18.
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Brazilian police say three of the 4 United States swimmers involved in the armed robbery scandal at the Games in Rio are cooperating with police. Their passports have been released and they recently departed Rio.
But Brazilian television aired this surveillance video taken at the gas station.
A closed-circuit gas station video of Lochte, Feigen, Bentz and Conger has been obtained by authorities in Brazil and is still under analysis.
Earlier this week, Lochte, who won a gold medal for the men’s 4×200 meter freestyle relay at the Rio Olympics, made headlines after he and three teammates, including Feigen, reported being robbed at gunpoint while out partying in Rio de Janeiro.
America’s official Olympic body acknowledged that one of its athletes had committed an act of vandalism in a gas station restroom and the swimmers had handed over money to security staff after they’d demanded payment for the damage in the early hours of Sunday. He said there was confusion because people at the gas station didn’t speak English and the athletes didn’t speak Portuguese.
“The victims arrived with their physical and psychological integrity unshaken, even joking with one another”, she said. “Violence against material things could become violence against the security guards and others who are around”.
The four athletes claimed they were robbed as they travelled back to the Athletes’ Village after a party on Sunday.
Though Lochte has returned to the USA, the three other swimmers were detained in Brazil “shortly before their flight was scheduled to depart from Rio”, ABC News claims. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Conger and Bentz had checked in for a flight out of Brazil after testifying in the robbery probe.
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Feigen also spoke to police, but Veloso wouldn’t comment on where the questioning took place.
