After vandalizing a Rio de Janeiro gas station, Ryan Lochte and his teammates willingly gave their cash to the manager to keep the police out of it, multiple eye witnesses said Saturday — further hurting the credibility of the swimmers’ robbery claims.
All four Olympians were in an “altered” state and “very, very, very worked up” on that pre-dawn morning last Sunday, one of the station’s two armed security guards told Brazil’s O Globo TV.
The swimmers had just got caught breaking into and damaging the gas station bathroom and were furious that security guards there asked their taxi driver not to drive them away until the police were called, the one guard said.
Both guards drew their weapons on the angry, edgy swimmers, he said.
“When they turned in my direction, I was worried that they were going to assault me because they were very worked up,” the guard remembered.
‘[The swimmers were] very, very, very worked up…They were in such a way that they seemed altered and they couldn’t even speak straight.’
- one of the gas station's guards
“Very, very, very worked up. I don’t know if they were on drugs. I can’t tell you that. But they were in such a way that they seemed altered and they couldn’t even speak straight.”
Ultimately, the four men handed over the money they had on them, the guard said.
“They said they had $20 and 100 reais ($31) with them and would pay for the damage they caused at the station,” the guard said.
“They wanted to leave and didn’t want any more confusion,” the guard said.
The swimmers were desperate that the police not be called, according to the guard and to a second witness, a DJ who told The Associated Press that he happened to be at the gas station after a party and interceded because he spoke English and Portuguese.
“No police. Please, don’t call police!” the DJ, Fernando Deluz, 38, recalled the swimmers saying.
No gun was pointed at the swimmers by the time he was involved, Deluz insisted.
“There was no aggression. Pointing a gun at them? Never. There was nothing like that,” Deluz told the AP.
Deluz said he was surprised to learn afterward that the four men were Olympic swimmers. “They made a lot of mistakes,” he told the AP. “But the worst was that they lied about what happened.”
Lochte on Friday issued a statement online apologizing for not being “more careful and candid,” but maintaining he and his teammates were forced at gunpoint to pay money before they could leave the gas station.
Brazilian police have said Lochte was lying when he said he was robbed, and that the swimmers had vandalized the gas station bathroom while intoxicated.
