BREAKING!! U.S. swimmers INDICTED for LYING to police!!

by SooperMexican

In an ongoing saga with complicated and competing stories and claims, the future of U.S. Olympian swimmers is being debated by Brazilian authorities who say they lied about being robbed, and have indicted them for false reporting of a crime:

From ABC News:

Authorities in Rio de Janeiro have indicted U.S. Olympic swimmers Ryan Lochte and James Feigen on charges of false reporting of a crime, the Federal Police of Brazil confirmed.

Authorities had a press conference today to accuse the swimmers of lying to cover up the crimes they committed:

Brazilian police said Thursday that swimmer Ryan Lochte and U.S. teammates were not robbed after a night of partying, and that the intoxicated athletes instead vandalized a gas station bathroom and were questioned by guards before they paid for the damage and left.

The robbery that was or wasn’t has become the biggest spectacle outside of the Olympic venues in Rio, and given American swimming a black eye in Brazil after an otherwise remarkable run at the Summer Games.

“No robbery was committed against these athletes. They were not victims of the crimes they claimed,” Civil Police Chief Fernando Veloso said during an afternoon news conference.

So is there any possibility both stories are true? Could it be that the swimmers thought they were being robbed when they were being accosted by a security guard who was trying to get them to stay and answer for some damage they committed while intoxicated? It seems both sides are exaggerating at least a little bit and it’s hard to know who’s in the wrong.

This is what Lochte originally said:

“We got pulled over, in the 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,” Lochte told NBC’s “Today” the morning after the incident. “They pulled out their guns, they told the other swimmers to get down on the ground – they got down on the ground. I refused, I was like we didn’t do anything wrong, so – I’m not getting down on the ground.

“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.”

But Lochte backed off some of those claims as the week went on, saying the taxi wasn’t pulled over by men with a badge but rather the athletes were robbed after stopping at a gas station. Lochte also said the assailant pointed a gun at him rather than putting it to his head.

The Daily Mail even has a salacious claim that they might have been trying to pick up prostitutes, but there’s no evidence put forth to substantiate this accusation:

One big mystery remains however,  as it pertains to the identity of the two women who were with the men prior to the incident.

A woman who witnessed the event poke to People and said that she saw the men leave the bathroom and then ignore workers as they tried to get them to stop and pay, saying they owed them money for the damage the caused to the facility.

‘One of them said that they hadn’t done nothing wrong, and that the gas station was trying to get money from Americans,’ said the woman Bruna Castro-Ruiz.

‘He said that they were in the Olympics and that they hadn’t done anything wrong. I don’t know his name. He said that if they went to jail, that America would be mad.’

Catro-Ruiz said that the security guard only pulled out the gun so that the men would not leave the scene before police came, and then eventually handed over some money.

So I don’t know – I really think people need to keep from making conclusions about this before the details come out fully. We’re all tempted to draw conclusions based on generalizations of nationality, on both sides, but really we won’t know until more details come out.


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