“There were minor injuries from glass shards but nobody was seriously hurt”.
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However, speaking at the IOC’s daily press briefing on Wednesday, Rio 2016’s security director Luiz Fernando Correa said: “The forensic analysis was done here at the MPC and the first findings confirm the bus was hit by a rock, which is worrying and intolerable”.
Two windows were smashed as the bus travelled between the Deodoro zone and the main transport mall in Rio’s Olympic Park at around 1930 local time (2330BST), with about a dozen media on board.
Some reports said it was shot at, but others said stones had been thrown.
“We were just shot at”. A security source said the shell was found near the stables.
On Saturday a bullet pierced the roof of the media tent at the Olympic Equestrian Centre – which is located near a military compound.
An American reporter who was on a bus attacked in Rio is adamant the vehicle was hit with bullets, not rocks. Officials said it had been fired from a hillside favela, but said the games had not been targeted.
But after this disturbing incident, Andrada closed by saying, “If we dropped the ball on security, we need to get our act together, and we need to keep an eye on the mission that we have which is to make Rio the safest city in the world during the games”.
“We have not been able to identify who did this but it appears to be an act of vandalism, not an act of criminal aggression targeting anyone in particular”, he told reporters.
International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said of the incident: “We are taking it very seriously”.
There was evidence of increased patrols on Wednesday morning with a number of police patrols lined along the route from one of the media accommodation villages to the main transport mall on the Olympic Park. The man was rushed to hospital. She said she was a retired U.S. Air Force captain and is working in Rio for a basketball publication.
She added that the overhead lights on the bus were never turned off after the attack, leaving those on the bus as potential targets.
Michaelson said: “I know what a gun sounds like”.
A Reuters photograph taken in the first moments of the incident showed a small hole, about the width of a finger, in one of the windows.
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“I will not believe that was stone-throwing unless I see a forensics and a ballistics report looking not at the steel surround. but at the glass, which was the point of impact”, Michaelson told reporters after the news conference.
