A newly released video shows the now-wife of NFL player Ray Rice lovingly nuzzling him shortly after he knocked her out cold at a casino in New Jersey.
The video obtained by ABC News shows the couple in handcuffs immediately after the February elevator fight in which the former Baltimore Ravens player punched his then-fiancee, Janay, in Atlantic City.
In the footage, both are separated in a lobby by authorities.
Law enforcement officials later lead them into an elevator, where they try to embrace despite their handcuffs.
They appear to steal a kiss in the elevator as she buries her head in his neck before they enter separate police cars.
ABC posted three minutes of the video online.
A different elevator scene
The latest elevator scene is a far cry from another one moments earlier that changed their lives forever.
In images from a previously released video, the 200-pound football player punches her, sending her head into the wall before she collapses unconscious to the floor. Surveillance video shows Ray Rice dragging her partially out of the elevator and dumping her limp body face-first on the ground.
Ray Rice was indefinitely suspended by the NFL while Janay Rice became a face of domestic violence.
The ABC surveillance footage appears to show what happened after the attack.
‘This is a time of healing’
Ray Rice’s attorney, Peter Ginsberg, said the two are trying to move past the incident.
“This is a time of healing and he, quite naturally, doesn’t want another media showing of what must have been the worst event of his life,” Ginsberg said. “What the media ought to be focusing on is the issue of domestic violence.”
In an interview with NBC this month, Janay Rice defended her husband, saying he is a human who made a mistake that he’d never made before and won’t make again.
Angry and hurt
Janay Rice has said she was angry by her husband’s violence, but it also hurt to see his career go down the drain.
She attributed Ray Rice’s actions that February night on “humanness.”
“Everybody makes mistakes. After this whole situation, you would think that we lived in a country full of people who never made a mistake,” she said this month.
Police said both struck each other with their hands and refused medical treatment at the scene.
A prosecutor later dropped assault charges against Janay Rice and charged her husband with aggravated assault . A grand jury indicted him in March, and they wed the next day.
In July, after a disciplinary hearing, the NFL announced it would suspend Ray Rice for two games — until another surveillance video — the one that captured the punch — surfaced September 8.
By the end of the day, the Ravens had released Rice and the NFL made his suspension indefinite.
An arbitrator later found that the NFL abused its discretion by indefinitely suspending Rice when it had originally sat him down for only two games.
The decision cleared Rice to play again.