A law enforcement official said on Wednesday that he sent the video of Ray Rice punching his then fiancée Janay Palmer-Rice to the NFL in April. The person spoke on anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
According to the Associated Press, the law official played for them a 12-second voicemail from an NFL office on April 9 that confirmed that the NFL had received the video. In the voicemail a female voice expresses thanks and says, ''You're right. It's terrible.'' The law official said that he has had no further contact with anyone at the NFL and can’t confirm if anyone at the NFL has seen the video.
On Monday TMZ released the video from inside the elevator where the incident took place. The video that was shown to the AP was slightly longer and includes some audio. In the video that the AP saw, Rice and his wife can be heard shouting obscenities at each other and she spit at him before he punched her. After the punch Rice dragged her out of the elevator and hotel staff can be heard saying ''She's drunk, right?'' and then ''No cops.''
The NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell have insisted that they asked for the video and couldn’t obtain it, and that they didn’t see the video until it was released on Monday. In a statement the NFL has denied the AP report, saying that no one in its office has seen or possessed the video, according to CBS Sports.
"We have no knowledge of this," the NFL’s statement 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."
Goodell said that the NFL requested the video from law enforcement and not the casino where the incident took place in a memo to NFL teams on Wednesday.
''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,'' Goodell wrote in the memo.
Rice had his contract terminated by the Baltimore Ravens on Monday and was also suspended indefinitely by the NFL. He was originally suspended for just two games. Rice was charged with felony aggravated assault, but was accepted into an intervention program in May which allowed him to avoid jail time and could lead to the charge being taken off his record.