Drone fired at media centre
A bullet that penetrated the roof of the media center at the Rio Olympics equestrian venue may have been a stray fired by a gunman aiming at police aircraft, Brazil's defense minister said Sunday.
"At that precise moment we had drones flying over the favela and we also had a balloon flying over," Defense Minister Raul Jungmann told journalists.
"A possible hypothesis is that someone felt he was being followed, filmed, observed, and it's possible -- although nothing is certain yet -- that the shot was fired from there," he said.
Police, which fall under military control in Brazil, are engaged in often brutal operations against drug traffickers who control swaths of Rio's favelas, as poor, often largely unregulated neighborhoods are called. Shootings are an everyday occurrence.
No one was hurt when the bullet hit the media tent, but the incident embarrassed Brazilian authorities who have deployed an unprecedented 85,000 soldiers and police to protect the Olympics.
A TVNZ report said the bullet narrowly missed a New Zealand team official who was badly shaken by the incident.
The Deodoro equestrian venue, where the first day of the dressage competition was being held on Saturday, is on a military base.
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