A tearful Ryan Lochte confessed Saturday that he “over-exaggerated” an incident that he originally claimed was a robbery at gunpoint at the Rio Olympics. Lochte’s mom confirmed the crime and said the robbers “just took their wallets and basically that was it”. “There was a gun pointed in our direction – we were all frightened”.
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“And that’s why I’m taking full responsibility for it”, the 32-year-old medalist replied, adding that “I over-exaggerated that story”.
In fact, Veloso said this week that “they fabricated a story”.
We got pulled over, in our taxi, and these guys came out with a badge, a police badge, no lights, no nothing just a police badge and they pulled us over.
“Brazil doesn’t deserve that”, he said to Globo. The saga was an enormous embarrassment for the U.S. Olympic team, which has dominated in the medal count. There, security guards had confronted the swimmers about a bathroom door they apparently forced open. The video showed them walking back to the Olympic Village, where athletes room during the games, looking pretty put-together, without any apparent stress one would think robberies cause.
As Bentz and Conger, were whisked through airport security and onto a plane home Thursday night, their attorney insisted they had nothing to do with Lochte’s story.
Lochte responded, “I left details out”.
Bentz, 20, and Conger, 21, were removed from their USA -bound flight Wednesday night by Brazilian authorities, who seized their passports and questioned them for several hours about the incident. “This has to be made very, very clear”, lawyer Sergio Riera told The Associated Press. “They did not make any untruthful testimony”. “But the worst was that they lied about what happened”. Local authorities have said the swimmers’ claims of assault and robbery are false.
Feigen, 26, was also prevented from leaving Brazil, and was released Friday only after agreeing to pay a fine of about $10,800 to a Brazilian charity.
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Though police appear mostly finished with their probe, the case may be far from settled. “Please, don’t call police!'” said Deluz.
