UPDATE (3:22 p.m.): NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has suspended Ray Rice indefinitely upon viewing a new video of the running back assaulting his then-fiancee. The Baltimore Ravens have terminated his contract. (I wouldn’t say that’s undeserved, but was anyone under the impression that something other than what we now see on the tape occurred in that elevator?)
ORIGINAL STORY: The video released by TMZ this morning just confirms what most reasonable people had already assumed and what Ray Rice more or less implied by his eventual apologies: He dragged his then-fiancée Janay Palmer out of an Atlantic City casino elevator as she lay unconscious because he had just punched her. But I guess the handful of Internet commenters who continued to defend Rice because “we don’t know what really happened in that elevator” can finally call it quits.
TMZ got the new video from a former employee of the now-closed Revel Casino Hotel where the incident took place. The employee told TMZ that Roger Goodell had watched the video before settling on Rice’s widely criticized two-game suspension. (UPDATE: That has been contradicted by the NFL, which told CNN that “no one in the NFL offices, including Goodell, had seen the newly released footage of the incident until Monday.”)
