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The weekend of the big festivities in Arizona, Irvin was accused of misconduct by a hotel employee at the Marriott-owned Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel. The allegations led to him being
pulled from NFL Network coverage and him filing a $100 million lawsuit, but now a video of the incident shows what truly happened.
For nearly two minutes, Irvin can be seen having a conversation with the woman in the hotel’s lobby, a far cry from the sexual assault allegations he initially received. Though there’s no audio, the video shows Irvin touching the woman’s arm twice and the two shaking hands before going their separate ways.
Irvin and his attorney, Levi McCathern, displayed the video during a news conference, where a visibly distraught Irvin spoke about the encounter.
“This is what I’m struggling with,” Irvin said. “You try to be an ambassador of the league and also understand that God has blessed me and given me a platform to try to touch people, try to raise people, try to lift people up. I’ve met a lot of fans. I’ve always tried to be good with people.”
Irvin explained how dangerous it can be when Black people are falsely blamed for crimes.
“This sickens me, this sickens me,” Irvin said in a video posted by
Dallas Morning News’ Michael Gehlken. “Because in this great country, it takes me back to a time where a white woman would accuse a black man of something, and they would take a bunch of guys that were above the law, run in a barn, put a rope around his foot and drag him through the mud and hang him by a tree.”
See how Twitter reacted to the video’s release below.
