UPDATE: Kansas City Chiefs release Kareem Hunt after video shows him kicking, pushing woman in brutal video
Team officials claim he lied when they asked him about the February incident.
Updated: Nov. 30, 2018, 9:10 pm ET:
Accusing Kareem Hunt of lying, Kansas City Chiefs officials on Friday cut the star player from the team after a video of him pushing, and kicking a woman went viral, TMZ reported.
“The team says when the NFL and Cleveland PD launched their investigations the team called in Hunt and ‘several members of our management team spoke directly to him. Kareem was not truthful in those discussions. The video released today confirms that fact,'” the report read.
Statement from the Kansas City Chiefs on Kareem Hunt
➡️ https://t.co/MrjIX1Y7Ke pic.twitter.com/efSMqUDio1
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) December 1, 2018
Earlier:
In the NFL’s second major domestic violence-related controversy in as many weeks, Kansas City Chiefs’ running back Kareem Hunt was caught on camera assaulting a woman at a Cleveland hotel earlier this year, according to TMZ, which released the video Friday afternoon.
Hotel video of the incident, which occurred in February, shows Hunt and the unnamed woman angrily trading words in a hallway and being separated by several people. Hunt proceeds to shove the woman to the ground and she hit him in the face.
Two men escorted Hunt down a separate hallway until he broke free and knocked the woman over before kicking her. Police were called to the scene, but no arrests were made, and no charges were filed.
Body-cam footage, also obtained by TMZ, shows the woman and witnesses giving differing accounts of what escalated the incident. The woman told police that she wouldn’t have sex with one of Hunt’s friends, while they claimed that she called one of the men the n-word after being asked to leave Hunt’s hotel room.
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According to Yahoo Sports and ESPN, both the Chiefs and the NFL learned of the incident when it happened and knew of the video’s existence and decided against suspension.
In August, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt addressed reports of both this incident and another in which he was accused of punching a man. Hunt stood behind the second-year running back, ESPN wrote.
“Kareem is a young man, second year in the league, obviously had a very big year on the field last year,” Clark Hunt told the sports website. “I’m sure he learned some lessons this offseason and hopefully won’t be in those kind of situations in the future.”
The incident comes as the fallout after the Washington Redskins claimed former San Francisco linebacker Reuben Foster, just three days after he was arrested for his second domestic violence incident in eight months.
