A video showing the former NFL star Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée was received by the league five months ago, according to a law enforcement officer who claims to have sent it, piling fresh pressure on beleaguered officials who claimed they did not know of it before this week.
Following the officer’s revelation, the NFL on Wednesday night said former FBI director Robert Mueller would investigate how the NFL handled evidence as it investigated the domestic violence claims against Rice.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the investigation would be overseen by NFL owners John Mara of the New York Giants and Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Mueller would have access to all NFL records.
The announcement came after an unnamed law enforcement official played to the Associated Press a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office number on April 9th confirming the video arrived. A female voice expressed thanks and said: “You’re right. It’s terrible.”
The report appeared to contradict NFL claims that its executives had not seen the footage – and thus did not suspend Rice – until the website TMZ posted the video this week, setting off a nationwide furore.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league was investigating the AP report. “We have no knowledge of this,” he said. “We are not aware of anyone in our office who possessed or saw the video before it was made public on Monday. We will look into it.”
The Baltimore Ravens, which terminated Rice's contract this week, also came under renewed scrutiny after ABC News cited two sources saying the team knew of the brutality of the assault, and that Rice's lawyer had a copy of the tape, soon after it happened.
A surveillance camera in the elevator of the Revel Casino hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, recorded the running back punching Janay Palmer on February 15th. She crumpled, apparently unconscious.
A video of Rice dragging Palmer out of the elevator emerged days later but footage of the punch did not surface until this week. In the immediate aftermath Rice (27) was charged with felony aggravated assault and suspended for two games. His lawyer described the incident as a “minor physical altercation”.
After the video of the punch was published by TMZ this week, the Ravens fired Rice and the NFL indefinitely suspended him.
AP’s law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said he had no further communication with any NFL employee after receiving confirmation of receipt of the DVD copy he sent.
He said he was unauthorised to release the video but shared it unsolicited so the NFL would have it before deciding Rice’s punishment.
The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told CBS on Tuesday that “no one in the NFL, to my knowledge” had seen the footage until it was posted online. “We assumed that there was a video. We asked for video. But we were never granted that opportunity,” Goodell said.
In a memo to the NFL’s 32 teams this week, Goodell said the league asked law enforcement agencies for the video, but not the casino. “In the context of a criminal investigation, information obtained outside of law enforcement that has not been tested by prosecutors or by the court system is not necessarily a reliable basis for imposing league discipline,” he wrote.
Palmer, who married Rice after the assault and now goes by the name Janay Rice, has accused the media of ruining her husband's career on the basis of one isolated incident.
Unnamed hotel security staff who allegedly interceded in the aftermath depicted a fraught scene to ESPN. “When she regained consciousness she said, ‘How could you do this to me? I’m the mother of your kid’,” one staffer said.
ESPN reconstructed the incident on the basis of two staffers who were on duty that night, and a third who reviewed the elevator footage. One said Rice spat in Palmer’s face twice, “once outside the elevator and once inside,” prompting her to retaliate with gestures which were met with the knockout punch.
Guardian Service
