When the National Football League announced that it had suspended Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for two games for an altercation he had with Janay Palmer in Atlantic City's Revel Casino, the only footage released to the public was of Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of the elevator.
During a May 23, 2014 press conference, Palmer insisted that the argument had turned violent, and that she "deeply regretted the role that she played on the night of the incident."
But security video from within the Revel Casino elevator obtained by TMZ shows a vicious, but not violent, argument in which Palmer approaches Rice only to be knocked unconscious with one blow. Her head then strikes the side of the elevator as she falls to the floor.
Rice then proceeds to stand over his then-fiancee, now-wife's unconscious body as the elevator descends.
Prosecutors allowed Rice to enter a pretrial diversionary program for the third-degree charge of aggravated assault, meaning that if he attends a year-long domestic violence program without being arrested again, the charge will be dismissed.
According to TMZ, the NFL had access to this video from within the elevator when it levied a two-game suspension against Rice.
In the wake of public furor over the lenient punishment, the NFL instituted a harsher penalty for those accused of domestic abuse -- a six-game suspension for a first offense, and a one-year ban for a second. As written, the policy only requires a player be suspected, not convicted, of having committed domestic abuse.
Watch video of the assault via TMZ Sports below.
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