BULLET STRIKE
Games security alert at media centre and man killed at Maracana
SECURITY at the Olympic Games was seriously breached on the first competitive day yesterday when a bullet was fired through the roof of a media centre at the equestrian venue, a controlled explosion had to be carried out close to the finish of the cycling road race and a man was shot dead outside the Maracana Stadium after a botched robbery.
Live action across 20 different sports was also blighted by logistical problems — including two-mile long queues to get through security which meant many venues were half empty.
There were about 50 people inside a photographers’ workroom at the Deodoro competition venue, where many British Olympians will be going for gold, when the bullet entered, scorching a hole through the canvas roof.
There was speculation that it had been fired from a nearby military base, although some witnesses pointed out that a favela, or shanty town, could be seen from the top of the spectator stands. Eyewitness Rob Carr, an American photographer, told The Mail On Sunday: ‘I was sitting in the workroom having lunch with a few colleagues and all of a sudden I heard this loud thud and a rattling and I was like, “what the hell was that?”
‘I turned round and saw it was a piece of metal and one of the other photographers said: “Holy crap, there’s a bullet on the ground.” It appeared it was shot from a far distance because when it came in it didn’t lodge into anything. But it landed about 10 feet from me and three feet from a group of other photographers. Ten minutes later a bunch of IOC people came and met with local military force and they were standing outside looking at the round trying to figure out what was going on.’
Jon Stroud, a freelance photographer, added: ‘The bullet came through the roof about a couple of metres from one of the photographers and about three or four metres from me, it was a military bullet. No one shut down the media centre.’
Venue media manager Anja Krabbe said: ‘The security services are currently investigating what happened and I cannot say more until then.’
There is no suggestion there was any volatile device inside a bag that was, according to sources, dropped from a window of a building near the road race finish line and destroyed by police.