Report: Team Knew Details Of Ray Rice Abuse From The Beginning

Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice sits on the sideline in the second half of an NFL preseason football game against the San Francisco 49ers, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Baltimore Ravens engaged in “purposeful misdirection” while the NFL took an “uncharacteristically passive approach” in the investigation of Ray Rice’s domestic violence, according to an explosive report from ESPN’s “Outside the Lines.”

According to the report, a lengthy tick-tock that details the sordid saga from the start seven months ago, Ravens personnel was aware of what the now-infamous elevator surveillance footage showed mere hours after Rice punched his then-fiancee, Janay Palmer, and knocked her unconscious.

Just hours after running back Ray Rice knocked out his then-fiancée with a left hook at the Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Baltimore Ravens’ director of security, Darren Sanders, reached an Atlantic City police officer by phone. While watching surveillance video — shot from inside the elevator where Rice’s punch knocked his fiancée unconscious — the officer, who told Sanders he just happened to be a Ravens fan, described in detail to Sanders what he was seeing.
Sanders quickly relayed the damning video’s play-by-play to team executives in Baltimore, unknowingly starting a seven-month odyssey that has mushroomed into the biggest crisis confronting a commissioner in the NFL’s 94-year history.

The report also reiterates that Rice told NFL commissioner Roger Goodell what transpired inside the casino elevator. Goodell said in an interview earlier this month that Rice had provided an “ambiguous” account of the events.

At a press conference on Friday, Goodell said he has not considered resigning.

In a statement, the Ravens disputed the report, which was based on interviews with more than 20 sources in the past 11 days, saying it “contains numerous errors, inaccuracies, false assumptions and, perhaps, misunderstandings.”

Read the full “OTL” report here.

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: