Brazil’s authorities are looking to question United States swimming stars Ryan Lochte and James Feigen about their accounts of being robbed at gunpoint during the Rio Olympics – although it appears that Lochte, at least, has already left the country.
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Lochte and his three teammates said they were held up at gunpoint in a taxi as they returned to the athletes village from a party, several hours after the last Olympic swimming events were held.
Judge Keyla Blanc, of Brazil’s Special Tribunal for Fans and Major Events, ordered police on Wednesday to seize the passports of Lochte and fellow gold medalist James Feigen so they could be questioned over inconsistencies in their descriptions of the robbery at the weekend.
Sandusky said that the USA team would continue to cooperate with Brazilian police on the matter.
Police discovered after checks at Rio’s global airport that Lochte, 32, had already left Brazil, where he won a relay gold medal in the Olympic swimming competition that ended on Saturday.
“Judge De Cnop also highlighted the competitor’s attitude when they got to the Olympic Village as shown in the surveillance cameras”. Rio police went to the athletes’ village on Wednesday to question the swimmers, but they were nowhere to be found. They didn’t arrive back to the athletes’ village until 6:56am.
The Daily Mail reported on the footage from the X-ray machines.
Lochte left for the United States on Monday aboard a commercial flight before the judge’s order was issued, a spokesman for federal police said.
It fed into the existing concern about rampant crime in Rio, and directly challenged repeated assurances from Brazilian officials that the 85,000 police and soldiers deployed during the Games could at least keep the athletes safe. “I’m just trying to give Brazil what they need or what they want and get out of here, ” Feigen told USA TODAY Sports during a telephone interview Wednesday night.
Steve Lochte said. “It’s just ridiculous”.
The U.S. Olympic Committee confirmed that the robbery took place on Sunday.
Speaking to NBC, Lochte described a harrowing encounter with the thieves. They pulled out their guns, they told the other swimmers to get down on the ground – they got down on the ground. An International Olympic Committee spokesman at first said reports of the robbery were ‘”absolutely not true”, then reversed himself, apologised and said he was relying on initial information from the USOC that was wrong.
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The elder Lochte said his son’s Olympic credential and cell phone weren’t taken during the incident early Sunday morning.
