Ryan Lochte Apologizes For 'Behavior' In Rio
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP/CBSDFW) - Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte has taken to twitter to apologize for his "behavior" last week.
In the post, Lochte apologizes for "not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning and for my role in taking the focus away from the many athletes fulfilling their dreams of participating in the Olympics."
A top Brazilian police official said Ryan Lochte and three other American swimmers were not the victims of a robbery as some of the athletes had claimed.
Civil Police Chief Fernando Veloso said the four men became rowdy while at a gas station early Sunday after a night of partying. He said they were inebriated, and broke down the door of a bathroom, a soap dispenser and a mirror.
Veloso told a Thursday news conference that "no robbery was committed against these athletes. They were not victims of the crimes they claimed."
Veloso says police had interviewed the taxi driver with the men that night and two security guards who confronted them at the bathroom.
He did not say whether the guards pulled their guns on the swimmers but says investigators had found no excessive use of force. An official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing told The Associated Press earlier Thursday that two security guards pointed guns at the swimmers.
The whole incident started around around 6 a.m. on Sunday when Lochte, along with fellow swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, stopped at a gas station in Barra da Tijuca, a suburb of Rio where many Olympic venues are located, an official told the AP. One of the swimmers tried but failed to open the door of an outside bathroom.
A few of the swimmers then pushed on the door and broke it. A security guard appeared and confronted them, the official said.
According to the official, the gas station manager then arrived. Using a customer to translate, the manager asked the swimmers to pay for the broken door. After a discussion, they did pay him an unknown amount of money and then left.
Sports gossip site, Terez Owens, released footage of the incident on their website Thursday. In it, you can't see the swimmers damage anything, but you can see them putting their hands up near their taxi cab. They then can be seen from another angle on the video sitting down on the pavement, still with their hands raised. However, it's tough to make out the actions of the person they are talking to at this point. Then one of swimmers, appearing to be Lochte, can been seen getting off the ground and talking to another unknown person. Another one of the swimmers also gets up to talk to the person and the video ends.
The official says that swimmers Conger and Bentz, who were pulled off a plane going back to the United States late Wednesday, told police that the robbery story had been fabricated.
Lochte first lied about the robbery to his mother, Ileana Lochte, who spoke with reporters, the police official said. That led to news coverage of the incident and prompted police attention.
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