Seeking a fresh start, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice publicly apologized to his wife and abused women everywhere when fielding questions for the first time about his alleged altercation with his then-fiancée in February.
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Rice, who wouldn't go into detail about the video that surfaced of him dragging his unconscious fiancée out of an elevator in Atlantic City, N.J., ,said that it was a "one-time incident." Rice allegedly struck his now-wife, Janay Palmer, and knocked her unconscious on Feb. 15.
"I made the biggest mistake of my life," Rice, who also said he hoped to become an "ambassador" against domestic violence said via ESPN.
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Rice, who reportedly referred to his wife, as an "angel," discussed his sorrow over the incident while adding that his wife didn't do anything wrong.
"My actions that night were totally inexcusable," he said. "That night I replay over and over in my head. That's not me. My actions were inexcusable. That's something I have to live with the rest of my life. The pain I'm talking about living with is waking up every day, and my daughter is 2 years old now, and I have a little girl, who's very smart, very intelligent, and one day she's going to know the power of Google, and me having to explain that to her, what happened that night."
Palmer was in attendance, and Rice took the time to apologize to her directly.
"There are many nights that me and my wife sleep together and we still have to deal with this," Rice said with some of his teammates in attendance. "And her pain is my pain, my pain is her pain, the one thing I wanted to do today is you know apologize to my wife, who I've known since high school. I've known her since a kid. I met her in high school and she's the same girl now, great mother, and she's a great wife, and she supports me throughout."
Rice pleaded not guilty to a third-degree charge of aggravated assault and avoided a trial by being accepted into a pre-trial intervention program in May, and he was subsequently suspended two games by the NFL for his actions and fined $529,411.24.
"I own my actions," he said. "I just don't want to keep reliving the incident. It doesn't bring any good to me. I'm just trying to move forward from it. I don't condone it. I take full responsibility for my actions. What happened that night is something that I'm going to pay for the rest of my life."
Rice, 27, rushed for 660 yards on 214 attempts and reached the endzone four times in 15 games for the Ravens last season as the team finished 8-8 and missed the playoffs coming off of a Super Bowl-winning season. Rice will now try to move on from the off-field incident.
"I let my wife down, I let my daughter down, I let my wife's parents down, I let the whole Baltimore community down," Rice said. "And I got my teammates here to support me and I let my teammates down, you know I let so many people down because of 30 seconds of my life that I know I can't take back."
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