Lawrence Phillips made his name in the blaze of stadium lights and roaring crowds – but he died alone, in a prison cell, leaving a troubling question: why?
Guards at California’s Kern Valley state prison found the former NFL running back unresponsive in his cell shortly after midnight on Wednesday, soon after which he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The California department of corrections and rehabilitation is investigating the death as a suicide.
If confirmed, that would resolve the cause of death but not the reason why a life so full of promise unravelled into violence and desolation.
Was the 40-year-old an incorrigible thug destined for self-destruction? Did football damage him? Did prison break him?
Guards at California’s Kern Valley state prison found the former NFL running back unresponsive in his cell shortly after midnight on Wednesday, soon after which he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The California department of corrections and rehabilitation is investigating the death as a suicide.
If confirmed, that would resolve the cause of death but not the reason why a life so full of promise unravelled into violence and desolation.
Was the 40-year-old an incorrigible thug destined for self-destruction? Did football damage him? Did prison break him?
Phillips, one former NFL player said, was a troubled character “from the get-go”. But some in the game believe a brain autopsy would reveal chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease linked to concussion and sub-concussive blows suffered in training and games. Others suggest he was unhinged by the isolation of a segregation unit – “a pretty serious formula for losing your mind”.
The most obvious explanation for suicide is that on Tuesday, hours before he was found in his cell, Phillips learned at a preliminary hearing that he could face the death penalty for murder. A superior court judge ruled that there was “sufficient cause to believe” the former St Louis Ram murdered a cellmate, Damion Soward, in April 2015.
Phillips had been in prison since 2008, serving a 31-year sentence for twice choking his girlfriend in 2005 and for driving a car into three teenagers after a pickup football game in Los Angeles.
Jesse Whitten, Phillips’s attorney, told USA Today his client had expected to win any murder trial. “There was nothing about his demeanour that made me think he was suicidal at all, or depressed,” Whitten said. “He was very confident about winning this case and he was even optimistic about his appeal on his prior cases.”
However, letters from Phillips over the past year depicted a grim existence behind bars – anger, ennui, alienation and an ever-present threat of violence.
He had a rough start in life, growing up in foster homes in California, but sublime athletic talent offered a way out.
