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Ryan Lochte: Missing Minutes From Gas Station Video Prove Lochte Was Telling The Truth, Source Reports

By Sandra Johnson
Published on: 07:26 PST, Aug 18, 2016

The Ryan Lochte robbery story just keeps getting more complicated. The latest developments in the saga involve Ryan Lochte, a surveillance video, and accusations that Lochte and his Olympic teammates may have fabricated their entire narrative about being robbed at gunpoint.

Brazilian officials have refuted Lochte’s claims that he was robbed at gunpoint, indicating that there is no evidence to support the allegations made by the American swimmers.

New security footage from a Rio de Janeiro gas station indicates that the story Lochte told might not be entirely true, and yet, the video doesn’t completely disprove his account of events either, a source told TMZ.

“Lochte and his team claim they were indeed taken out of a cab at gunpoint, but the video doesn’t show that because the gas station edited it out.”

The unnamed source for TMZ went on to report that “Lochte mistook the uniforms worn by the security guards as police uniforms, and he claims during the missing three minutes he and the other swimmers were pulled out of the taxi at gunpoint. ”

After the conclusion of the swimming events at the Olympics, Lochte and teammates Jimmy Feigen, Gunnar Bentz, and Jack Conger decided to have some fun out on the town, and they attended a party at the France House with the Brazilian swimmer, Thiago Pereira. After the party, when the Americans were returning to the Olympic village, something happened, but what exactly that was is being hotly contested.

According to Lochte, he and his teammates were robbed at gunpoint and forced to put their hands in the air while on the ground. When he initially told the story, Ryan Lochte reported that he and the three other American swimmers had been traveling in a taxi when they were pulled over by men impersonating police. The situation escalated, and Lochte initially said that one of the men had touched a gun to his forehead and cocked it.

On Wednesday, a Brazilian judge ordered Lochte and Feigan to surrender their passports and remain in Brazil until the situation had been resolved. By then, Lochte had already left the country and returned to the United States, but that wasn’t the case for the other three swimmers. Bentz and Conger were removed from a flight headed back to the United States, and Feigen checked in, but he never showed up for the same flight. All three men were taken in for further questioning by Brazilian authorities.

After returning to the United States, Lochte spoke with NBC‘s Matt Lauer about his experience in Rio. Lauer admits that Ryan Lochte changed some of the details of the story, saying that the cab had not actually been pulled over but had instead been stopped at a gas station at the time of the incident. Additionally, Lochte told Lauer that the gun had been pointed in his direction, rather than touched to his forehead.

Despite changing some of the details of his story, Lochte remained adamant when talking to Lauer that he and the others had not fabricated the entire story.

“I wouldn’t make up a story like this, nor would the others.”

According to the most recent reports, Ryan and the other swimmers stopped at the gas station to use the bathroom, where they allegedly got into a fight with one of the gas station employees after damaging the restroom.

Footage from the video shows Lochte and the swimmers sitting on the curb with their hands in the air, indicating that some sort of altercation may have occurred, but whether or not that altercation was a robbery is still unclear. Lochte and the other American swimmers were said to have been intoxicated at the time of the incident.

What do you thin of the discrepancies in Ryan Lochte’s robbery story? Do you think the video proves or disproves Lochte’s allegations of being held at gunpoint?

[Photo by Matt Hazlett/Getty Images]

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