Thomas held at gunpoint by wife after alleged affair
Ravens safety Earl Thomas III was held at gunpoint by his wife last month after she allegedly caught him cheating on her, according to charging documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun.
After arriving at a rental home in Austin, Texas, and finding Thomas in bed with another woman, Nina Thomas told police she held his pistol to his head, Austin Police wrote in the documents. Nina said she did not think that the gun could fire, as she’d taken out the magazine. But police said the 9 mm Beretta was still loaded with one round in the chamber.
Another woman at the home later told police that she heard Earl say, “Put the gun down.” A female voice responded, “The safety is off. If you come any
closer, I’ll shoot you.” Video of the incident showed Nina pointing the gun at Earl’s head in the hallway from less than a foot away, with the safety disengaged and her finger on the trigger, police wrote.
According to the charging documents, the video shows Earl flinch, duck his head and wrestle the gun away from her. The video later shows Nina strike Earl in the nose before it ends, police said.
The woman Earl was with at the rental home told police that Nina also threatened her and the other woman who was there with Earl’s brother, Seth. She pointed the gun at them and yelled, “I got something for all you hoes.” Police said the woman told her that one of the two women Nina arrived with swung a knife during the altercation, “as if to keep her at bay.”
The woman who was with Earl told police she had been in a romantic relationship with him for about two months and that Earl had said she was getting a divorce, according to the charging documents.
The Austin Police Department responded to the incident about 3:41 a.m. April 13, according to the charging documents. Police found Nina, with a knife in her hand, chasing Earl, who was shirtless and had a pistol in his hand, around a car. When cops drew their weapons and ordered them to the ground, they reportedly complied without incident.
Nina and two other women were charged with burglary of a residence, records show. Nina was also charged with burglary of a residence with intent to commit aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Nina was released on $25,000 bond and issued an emergency protective order that required her to stay 200 yards away from Earl and his alleged lover, according to the charging documents. Earl was not arrested.
A Ravens spokesperson said Thursday that the team “became aware of the situation when we read and saw it on the reports late last night and early this morning.”
According to a team official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Ravens are looking into the incident to determine whether Earl Thomas’ conduct violated his contract, which runs through 2022. The official said there were times last season when Ravens coaches thought Thomas strayed from their team concept, and that his struggles grasping the defense’s schemes in the secondary sometimes put him at odds with teammates.
Thomas, 31, was still named to his seventh career Pro Bowl in his first year with the Ravens, starting all but one game after an injury-marred previous three seasons with the Seattle Seahawks. He signed a four-year, $55 million deal, including $32 million guaranteed, with the Ravens last offseason after spending his first nine seasons in Seattle.
Nina’s attorney, Jonathan Goins, said in a release Wednesday that she had been wrongfully arrested. Goins said they had already gathered information that “controverts every single allegation made on the night in question” and that they were cooperating with the Travis County district attorney’s office.
Nina told police she’d discovered the alleged extramarital affair by logging into his Snapchat account after an argument and finding video of Earl with another woman. She then used his Snapchat account to track his location to the nearby rental home. According to the charging documents, she brought the two women with her and his pistol to scare him.
When the women arrived, they said they discovered Earl and his brother in bed with women in separate rooms.
In an Instagram video posted about an hour before TMZ first reported the incident, Earl said his agent had told him the outlet would soon report on an “altercation that happened with me and Nina.”
“I mean, it’s really not anybody’s business,” he said in the video. “It pisses me off that it got out, but it’s the world we live in today. But instead of talking about us, just keep us in your prayers. Stuff like this happens. You try to live the best life you possibly can, but sometimes it don’t go as planned. Just pray for us as we go through this stuff. We’re back talking. I’m seeing my kids. Just keep us in your prayers.”
Earl and Nina were married in 2016 and have three children. She’s scheduled to appear in court June 8, according to electronic court records for Travis County.