Source: The Daily Beast
RIO DE JANEIRO—The hope that Olympic security fears might prove overblown were shattered in spectacular fashion on the eve of the games when a man claiming to be a Russian diplomat shot dead a carjacker on a busy street close to the Olympic park.
Tackling the violence that mars one of the world’s most beautiful cities was one of the legacies that the 2016 Olympic organizers pledged to bequeath to Rio’s residents. Like almost every other legacy pledge, organizers and the state government have fallen well-short of what they promised.
The road that leads from central Rio to the athletes’ villages and main Olympic hub to the west of the city is a near-permanent crush of traffic exacerbated by dedicated Olympic lanes and a new “rapid” bus service. In the midst of that traffic on Thursday, it was reported by local media that two men on motorcycles attempted to rob a family at gun-point.
Categories: Americas